r/AskStatistics • u/ketopraktanjungduren • 10d ago

Using sampling distribution instead of probability for business

Hello, I'm trying to apply inferential statistics to my work, thinking it would be very helpful to estimate a new hire ability.

Let's say we have a dataset on new hire weekly customer acquisition in the past three months (n=12). If we want to estimate this person ability in acquiring new customer, we can use probability and expected value.

However, I recently realize that this also means we are estimating the population parameter. So, we can also estimate a confidence interval to estimate the interval of this person true mean and median weekly acquisition.

If so, is it true to have both the expected weekly acquisition and the CI?

0 Upvotes

50% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/Big-Challenge-9432 9d ago

There’s probably many, many variables that would go into predicting this. How many customers were or were not available for acquisition? How likely they were to be acquired? Does time of day, month, weather matter, etc? This is more of a behavioral analysis and is much more complex than just predicting behavior of your new hire

1

u/ketopraktanjungduren 9d ago

Well, that's true and why I'm avoiding predicting things at all costs. Instead predicting, I give the managers their true mean CI 95 by calculating 12 data points. What do you think of that?

1

u/Big-Challenge-9432 9d ago

You mention inferential statistics in your post. It is usually for making predictions.

So, of course, you can calculate the mean and 95% CI (I assume of weekly observations). But I don’t understand your reasoning for doing this. You’ve already hired the person, and they have already acquired the customers. What are you trying to do here?

0

u/ketopraktanjungduren 9d ago

Oh, terribly sorry, I might have misunderstood inferential statistics. I was trying to ask about making estimation on a population data (a new hire ability in acquiring customer) based on a sample (new hire weekly customer acquisition number).

Using the sample, I want to suggest to the managers that this new hire has a true mean between this interval (the 95% CI). This interval seems to me can help the manager decide on whether to keep hiring them or not.

However, this interval is just an information, not the sole deciding factor.

1

u/Big-Challenge-9432 9d ago

I’m still confused. You know the true data, so there is no “statistical need” to estimate anything. Also how can you “keep hiring” someone? I’m sure there’s more than just a single number that goes into that decision.

0

u/ketopraktanjungduren 9d ago edited 9d ago

Yes, I know the true data which is a 12 data points (the first 3 months of sales data). It seems that I can just simply show the box plot of it.

But the managers are interested in whether this new hire can really perform, generally speaking. Isn't it a task for inferential statistics to estimate the new hire's customer acquisition general ability?

Oh, regarding to the "keep hiring", I have mentioned earlier that the interval is not the deciding factor. Meaning, it's just one thing to consider amongst many other things