Management is a very complex task which requires a lot of patience, dedication and a host of other things in order to change the fortune of a company. The top managers certainly get almost all their calls right and this is exactly why they reach at the top. It requires a lot of investigation in order to take a decision or a call, this process is made easier by making use of statistics, every top company makes the use of numbers in order to access where they stand hence the importance of statistics is outlined in the success of every company. This paper will throw light upon various statistics methods and their goals. The usefulness of Statistics will be discussed in detail in this paper.
The Importance of Census
Census is a Statistic which is used very often by companies who plan to launch a new product in a market. Census is all about an in depth study about population, in an area of business marketing census is of utmost importance without knowing what type of people live in an area it is impossible to know what they would want to buy. Census is also used in surveys all over the world; many top magazines make use of this statistical tool in order to present the facts in front of their readers. The first census is believed to have been taken by the Babylonians, they took census once in 6-7 years to count the no of people and the stock like butter, honey etc available at their disposal.
Observational Studies
This is another very widely statistical tool used to determine results or to forecast the future, observational studies discovers the correlation between two events for instance the correlation between smoking and lung cancer. The information regarding an area of interest is collected in this type of tool and extensive research is carried out. For instance, in this type of research the activities of both smokers and non smokers will be closely studied and the cases of lung cancer will be compared in both the cases and lastly a conclusion will be arrived at. A classic example of observational studies is “We find that intelligent life evolved on Earth.
Naively, one might think that this piece of evidence suggests that life is likely to evolve on most Earth-like planets. But that would be to overlook an observation selection effect.” (Observation Selection Effects, 28 January 2009). The use of this tool is carried out extensively to foresee things and it is a very useful statistical tool.
Central Position
Central position in Statistics refers to three key terms namely, mean, mode and median. These three terms make up what is known as the central position. Mean, mode and median are properties of statistics which describe the statistical distribution. “Distribution is the set of all possible values for terms that represent defined events. The value of a term, when expressed as a variable, is called a random variable.”(Search data center, 28 January 2009).
The article by Stephen Jay titled “The median is not the message” portrays his life story and the importance of central position. The author suffers from Mesothelioma, which is cancer and the doctors, clearly told him that he would only survive for another eight months. The author is convinced that the people view mean and medians as hard realities; this is justified in the article by a classic example, which is the perception of people on the phrase “I will probably be dead in eight months” (Cancer Guide, 28 January 2009). The author gives this example because the doctors had told him that he would not survive for more than eight months as he was suffering from cancer.
The author looks at his disease and relates it really well with statistics. The author believes himself to be an optimist and also believes that variation is the only reality, he condemns people who know little about the importance of statistics and says that such people often have a pessimistic approach of looking at things. The author introduces a new term which is “The eight-month meridian” which means the number of months the author will live. The author believes that he just has eight months to live and considering this he concludes that more than half the people will live longer than him but at the same time the author applies the distribution of variation and looks at his chances of surviving longer than he expects.
Another important term is introduced by the author is “right skewed”. Right skewed is “In a symmetrical distribution, the profile of variation to the left of the central tendency is a mirror image of variation to the right. In skewed distributions, variation to one side of the central tendency is more stretched out – left skewed if extended to the left, right skewed if stretched out to the right. The distribution of variation had to be right skewed, I reasoned.
After all, the left of the distribution contains an irrevocable lower boundary of zero since mesothelioma can only be identified at death or before. Thus, there isn’t much room for the distribution’s lower (or left) half – it must be scrunched up between zero and eight months. But the upper (or right) half can extend out for years and years, even if nobody ultimately survives” (Cancer Guide, 28 January 2009). After relating his case with statistics the author felt relieved because he felt he had strong chances of living for more than eight months.
Considering the fact the author was confident that he had more time in his hands, he took a decision that he will plan a fight against the disease, this goes to show the spirit and attitude of the author. The author clears doubts about statistical distributions and says that such distributions apply only to prescribed set of circumstances; the author relates the statistical distributions to his case. The author lived on for 20 more years and died of cancer but it was not the same cancer. By using central position the author lived on for 20 more years, this goes to show the importance of central position, how beneficial the same can be in any one’s life.
Conclusion
The paper threw light upon different statistical methods such as Observation studies, Census etc and it is found that statistics is extremely helpful to predict the future and this is exactly why top managers use various statistical tools in order to make good decisions. The paper highlighted the usefulness of statistics in various areas.
References
Cancer Guide. In Cancerguide. Web.
Observation Selection Effects. In Anthropic. Web.
Statistical Mean. In Searchdatacenter. Web.