Using the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) to demonstrate the importance of understanding statistics for undergraduate students

Because of the increasing use of business analytics to improve business processes, it is not difficult to argue the importance that undergraduate business students gain the ability to understand, interpret, and communicate statistics. However, a task that may be difficult for statistics instructors is to quickly demonstrate and convince business students the importance of statistics. This paper presents an assignment that utilizes the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) to demonstrate the importance of understanding basic statistical concepts such as population parameters, sampling methods, descriptive measures, and displaying data. This can be administered to an introductory business statistics course in order to drum up students' initial interest and views of applicability of statistics.