(With Apologies to Dr. Strangelove)

 It is a course designed for graduate students in business who have not taken any statistics courses as undergraduates or in any previous graduate program.  I am working with many students who have never envisioned studying the discipline until they entered an MBA program.

 It is a course that is designed to teach students the introductory concepts contained in an undergraduate business core course or courses in statistics.  Soup to nuts, so to speak!

 I try to teach in one course the equivalent of two undergraduate introductory statistics courses.  I try to expose students to the basic concepts of both descriptive and inferential statistics as well as to regression analysis.

 The challenges addressed in this meeting dealt with the necessity of identifying topics that could be eliminated or deemphasized without sacrificing quality.  Why do this?  In my case the issue is time, or the lack thereof.

 Maybe nothing?  Maybe something?

 I work no problems by hand, and I do not require students to do so either.  The textbook is used only for reference.  I prepare my own set of problems as examples.  The students can download this set of problems from the electronic course reserves of the university library.  I use MegaStat and require all students to do the same as they learn how to perform basic statistical analyses.  We both generate and interpret statistical outputs using MegaStat.

 I give take home rather than in-class tests.  I give in-class quizzes in order to preserve the integrity of the grading process.  I give no homework, because I expect students to spend their time reviewing the past week’s material in order to prepare for the in-class quizzes.  Class time consists of lecture, question and answer, and software demonstrations of techniques leading to the answers of selected problems.  Implications to business professionals of the results of the work are stressed.

 I focus on statistical inference and regression analysis in this course.  I cover the basics of descriptive statistics to the extent necessary in order for students to be able to understand statistical inference.  I do not stress pictorial analysis of data sets.  I spend a small amount of time covering probability, probability distributions and sampling distributions in order to highlight some of the basic theory in these areas so as to lay the foundation for the study of statistical inference.

 Only as needed!  Evaluation of the knowledge of the statistical theory is minimal.  On a few of the in-class quizzes, some theory may be tested.

 Obviously, I think so, or I wouldn’t use it!  I believe that upon the completion of the course, students will have acquired the knowledge necessary to understand the role of statistics and utilize its concepts in the business world.

 Will I continue to teach the course in its traditional lecture format?  Will I be asked to develop and teach an on line version of the course?  If the latter comes to pass, will it be a different version of the course than what I am currently delivering?  Beats me, stay tuned!