Empirical Methods for Business

The subject introduces students without a strong mathematical background to some of the methods used to collect, present and analyse data and to provide illustrative applications to decision problems faced by business managers. Topics will be chosen from: sources of data; sampling and collection of primary data; presentation and summary measures of data; random variation of data and some implications for hypothesis testing and forecasting; an introduction to decision models with uncertainty; the use and interpretation of estimated regression equations; some forecasting methods used by business.