Business Analytics (F26)

Welcome to my Business Analytics (BA) class. Here’s an overview from the syllabus.

Course description

Decision making problems faced by managers are often quite complex and it can be very difficult to figure out how to structure the problem, how to obtain, organize and analyze data, how to organize and choose among different alternatives and how to present the analysis and conclusions. The result? People often guess or make decisions with very little analysis. Not such a good idea…

The explosion in inexpensive computing power, availability of massive amounts of data, and proliferation of modeling and application development software tools has made it possible for us to create very powerful decision support tools to help people make better decisions. That’s what this class is all about. We will blend techniques from the fields of statistics, management science, computer science and information systems to do business analytics.

Business analytics is a relatively newish term for a set of techniques and tools that actually have been around for quite some time. Our primary tool will be Excel along with Excel VBA and specialized add-ins for analysis. Spreadsheets are one of the most widely used tools in the business world. They have evolved into a functionally rich platform for quantitative business modeling and decision support system development. This course will allow you to become a power user and developer of spreadsheet based decision support tools for commonly faced managerial decision making problems. You will learn how to conduct “what if?” type analyses, use advanced spreadsheet features such as pivot tables, statistical and financial analysis functions, internal database features, querying external data sources, graphical data display, scenario analysis, risk analysis, simulation, goal seeking and solving optimization problems. You will also learn how to create spreadsheet based decision support tools by using application development features such as Visual Basic for Applications and integrating Excel with other Microsoft Office products such as MS Access. This course will integrate the use of spreadsheets with applied management science topics such as Monte-Carlo simulation and optimization models.