Will the Revised Business Statistics Course Meet the Needs of the Business Faculty?

Currently there is a strong movement to revise the introductory business statistics course to make the course more relevant and appealing to business students. A number of major changes in the traditional course have been recommended. Our concern is that we do not ignore the needs of the instructor who teaches the functional area courses and expects the students to have specific statistical skills. We designed and conducted a survey at Miami University to determine which statistical methods are currently being used in upper level business courses. Our survey results indicate that certain areas of statistical instruction that have been recommended for less emphasis, such as formal theory of probability and statistics, including the testing of hypotheses, are currently being used in a large percentage of the business courses. In addition, at least one proposed addition to the course may be of little interest to the instructor in the functional areas.