Introduction to Quantitative Methods

SUMMARY: As the process of decision-making is becoming increasingly difficult, managers can no longer afford to make decisions on the basis of subjective factors like experience, observation, or evaluation alone. They have to use objective and quantitative methods to collect, present, analyze and meaningfully interpret the available data to arrive at proper solutions.

Quantitative methods involve the use of numbers, symbols, mathematical expressions, and other quantitative elements and serve as supplements to the subjective intuition of the decision -makers. The utility of these methods has been realized from long ago.

Quantitative methods are broadly classified into two groups: statistical techniques and programming techniques. Statistical techniques include all the statistical methods that range from the collection of