GAF 530: Statistics for Risk and Decision Making

Course Objectives
The objective of this course is to equip students with analytical thinking and
powerful tools that help one to be more effective in risk and decision analysis. The
emphasis is not on the quantitative aspects, but on the qualitative insights that
come from using models aid managerial thinking and decision making. The course
consists of two parts: Business Statistics and Decision and Risk Analysis. In the
first part, Business statistics, the topics focus on extracting valuable information
from data, quantifying risk, and building models to forecast the future value of an
uncertain quantity, such as e.g., sales and prices. In the second part, Decision Risk
analysis, the topics focus on evaluating the impact of risk on our business, making
decisions in the face of uncertainty and allocating scarce resources so as to
optimize business performance.

Course outline: Topics

Part 1:
1. Methods of organizing and presenting data, frequency tables, line charts, bar
charts and pie charts.
2. Descriptive measure: Measure of central tendency, measures of variability.
3. Probability: Probability experiment, nature of probability, addition rules,
conditional probability and independence, multiplication rules, and Bayes’
theorem.
4. Probability distribution, binominal distribution, Poisson distribution, normal
distribution, uninformed distribution and exponential distribution.
5. Regression and Correlation Analysis: relation between variables, the simple
linear regression model, correlation, multiple regression analysis
6. Time Series: components of time series, isolating time series components
forecasting.
7. Index Numbers: Construction of index numbers uses of index numbers.

Part II: Topics

1 Decision making under uncertainty structuring and statistical decision problem.
2 Decision making under risk: Decision making under risk-discrete probabilities,
utility-when maximizing expected monetary value may not be an appropriate
guide to action.
3 Decision making under risk-continuous probabilities
4 Games Theory
5 5 Non-Parametric

Relevant Books

Marion Gross Sobol, Martin.K, Statistics for Business and economics: An Action learning

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approach, Mc Graw Hill, 2005
Roger.D, C.James, Patterson, statistical methods, Irwin,2007
John,E.Freud, Frank j.Williams, Benjamin M Perles, Prentice-Hall International Inc, 2006
David F. Patrick.G, Shannon, Business statistics – A decision making approach, 2006
David Bowers, Statistics for Economics and Business, Macmillan
James T. Mc Clare, George Benson, Statistics for Business and Economics, Dellen
Publishing Company, USA.
Tailoka Frank P, Business Mathematics and Statistics, Questions and Answers, Printpak
(Z) Limited.
Thomas H. Wonna Cott, Ronald J. Wonacott, Introductory Statistics, John Wiley and
Sons
Sons.