This book is an adaptation of Introduction to Business Statistics © 2010 by Thomas K. Tiemann, which is under a CC BY 3.0 Licence.
This adaptation includes the following changes and additions which are © 2015 by Mohammad Mahbobi and are licensed under a CC BY
4.0 Licence:
All examples have been changed to Canadian references, and information throughout the book, as applicable, has been revised to reflect
Canadian content. One or more interactive Excel spreadsheets have been added to each of the eight chapters in this textbook as
instructional tools.
About this Adaptation
Introductory Business Statistics with Interactive Spreadsheets – 1st Canadian Edition was adapted
by Mohammad Mahbobi from Thomas K. Tiemann’s textbook, Introductory Business Statistics. For
information about what was changed in this adaptation, refer to the copyright statement at the bottom of
the home page. This adaptation was funded by BCcampus Open Education.BCcampus Open Education began in 2012 as the B.C. Open Textbook Project with the goal of making
post-secondary education in British Columbia more accessible by reducing students’ costs through the
use of open textbooks and other OER. BCcampus supports the post-secondary institutions of British
Columbia as they adapt and evolve their teaching and learning practices to enable powerful learning
opportunities for the students of B.C. BCcampus Open Education is funded by the British Columbia
Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills & Training, and the Hewlett Foundation.
Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research resources that, through
permissions granted by the copyright holder, allow others to use, distribute, keep, or make changes to
them. Our open textbooks are openly licensed using a Creative Commons licence, and are offered in
various e-book formats free of charge, or as printed books that are available at cost.
For more information about open education in British Columbia, please visit the BCcampus Open
Education website. If you are an instructor who is using this book for a course, please fill out our
Adoption of an Open Textbook form.
A note from the original author: Thomas K. Tiemann
I have been teaching introductory statistics to undergraduate economics and business students for almost
30 years. When I took the course as an undergraduate, before computers were widely available to
students, we had lots of homework, and learned how to do the arithmetic needed to get the mathematical
answer. When I got to graduate school, I found out that I did not have any idea of how statistics worked,
or what test to use in what situation. The first few times I taught the course, I stressed learning what test
to use in what situation and what the arithmetic answer meant.
As computers became more and more available, students would do statistical studies that would have
taken months to perform before, and it became even more important that students understand some of
the basic ideas behind statistics, especially the sampling distribution, so I shifted my courses toward an
intuitive understanding of sampling distributions and their place in hypothesis testing. That is what is
presented here—my attempt to help students understand how statistics works, not just how to “get the
right number”.
Dedication
The adapted version of this textbook is dedicated to my father, Ghasemali, for his
support and encouragement, and especially for the opportunities that he opened
up for me when I was in high school, and to my wife, Maryam, with whom I share
credit for every goal I have achieved.
– Mohammad Mahbobi