Business statistics can be viewed from two perspectives. One focuses on the use of the statistics themselves. The other sees business statistics as a practitioner-based discipline. To the user, business statistics are intended to be helpful information pertaining to the efficacy of either a company (e.g., financial statements and financial ratios at a particular point in time over several time periods), an industry (e.g., a series of data or an index constructed over time), or the overall economy. The information gleaned is often intended to help the user in making decisions regarding planning, monitoring or investing. To the practitioner, however, business statistics is a particular academic branch of study, similar to other applications-based branches of statistics such as agricultural statistics, astrostatistics, biostatistics, educational statistics, medical statistics, psychological statistics and sociological statistics. The operational definition of.