An interactive Excel Visual Basic for Applications example for teaching statistics concepts

It is often challenging for business students to learn abstract statistical concepts and apply these concepts to their work. Three concepts in particular that we have found difficult to communicate effectively are the Central Limit Theorem, interval estimation and hypothesis testing. To improve the effectiveness of teaching these fundamental statistical concepts, we developed a Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) driven Excel spreadsheet that is built around one simple business scenario. The scenario involves setting the filling speed in a cereal filling plant. The faster the filling speed, the larger the variation in cereal box weights and the higher the chance of having an out-of-control filling process. On the other hand, the lower the filling speed, the less efficient the plant is at utilizing capacity. Through interactively finding the optimal filling speed, students are exposed to these key statistics concepts as well as random sampling techniques. Hence, we integrate the illustration of three important statistical concepts in one simple yet practical business scenario. Moreover, the Excel VBA-driven example demonstrates several Excel statistical formulae that are useful to business students. We conducted an in-class open-book quiz to two sections of professional MBA students to assess teaching effectiveness of this interactive example. The results showed that the scores of those using the interactive VBA demo were superior to those exposed to more traditional techniques at 10% significance level. A follow-up on-line feedback survey further supported the usage of the Excel VBA-driven example in enhancing student learning.