section_path: Applications/Business statistics
section_name: Business statistics
paragraph_text: Business statistics
  
  In business, "statistics" is a widely used management- and decision support tool. It is particularly applied in financial management, marketing management, and production, services and operations management. Statistics is also heavily used in management accounting and auditing. The discipline of Management Science formalizes the use of statistics, and other mathematics, in business. (Econometrics is the application of statistical methods to economic data in order to give empirical content to economic relationships.)
  
  A typical "Business Statistics" course is intended for business majors, and covers descriptive statistics (collection, description, analysis, and summary of data), probability (typically the binomial and normal distributions), test of hypotheses and confidence intervals, linear regression, and correlation; (follow-on) courses may include forecasting, time series, decision trees, multiple linear regression, and other topics from business analytics more generally. See also Business mathematics § University level. Professional certification programs, such as the CFA, often include topics in statistics.