I look forward to meeting you all when you arrive in Williamsburg in a few weeks. This message is a summary of the first course you will take in the MSBA Program, which is entitled Competing Through Business Analytics (CTBA). The course schedule for the Masters of Science in Business Analytics (MSBA) Program deviates from the typical semester format where you would take five courses simultaneously, each of which lasts the entire 16-weeks of the semester. Instead you will be taking only the CTBA course during the first three weeks of the semester, which makes sense because it serves as an introduction to the world of business analytics and our MSBA Program overall.
Each topic in this course falls within one of six categories:
· The Business Analytics Process: We will explore the steps of a process to complete a typical business analytics project.
· Introduction to Analytics: We will introduce analytics techniques, which are covered in subsequent courses, through guest speakers, case studies, and assignments.
· Presentation Skills: Analyzing data provides no value if the results are not communicated simply and clearly to managers who most often do not understand the techniques you will be using. You will practice constructing an effective presentation structure, constructing communicative slides, and building effective visualizations with Python. Other visualization techniques will be included in subsequent courses.
· Business Acumen: Your analyses and models will not provide value if you do not understand how business works. Through guest speakers and case studies, this course investigates how different industries work, how managers think and make decisions, the factors that make business difficult, and how companies do business analytics.
· Issues in Business Analytics: We will introduce issues that always arise when data is maintained and analyzed: security, confidentiality, and ethical considerations. Even if one does not intend to reveal sensitive data it is easy to do so inadvertently. Also, it is important to understand how malicious intruders can compromise computer networks and your data so that we can reduce the probability of such occurrences.
· Your Career: Guest speakers will tell you what skills and capabilities are important for you to have as you look for an analytics job.
· Skills: Python programming is used extensively in the MSBA Program and so we will do some training in this courses to keep the skills gained in the boot camp fresh and make sure that you understand how to input data with Python, manage it within lists, and iterate through it with loops. These are essential skills for success in this program.
You will be responsible for reading a book in the CTBA course, which is entitled Automate This, by Christopher Steiner. It is available many places and, of course, through amazon.com. Here’s a link and note that used copies are available:
You will have an assignment related to this book in the CTBA course, and the first three weeks will be intense, so it makes sense to read this book before coming to Williamsburg. In any case, you will find this book so interesting and enjoyable that it will not seem like homework. Moreover, if you want to get ahead on the assignment related to this book over the summer, then you can make some observations related to these questions you will answer for the assignment:
· What is an algorithm?
· What are the characteristics of a good algorithm and software implementation thereof? Why are these characteristics essential for an algorithm to be effective?
· List circumstances from the book where hardware was required to implement the algorithms. In your experience, can you recall any situations where algorithmic software works hand-in-hand with hardware?
· What ethical issues or unintended consequences can result from implementing algorithms? List instances mentioned in the book or other examples you might observe.
There is a second, optional, textbook for this course. I will be using it as the basis for some lecture content, although you will have no assignment that strictly requires it. Nonetheless, I strongly recommend that you purchase and read it because its content will be beneficial for one assignment in the CTBA course and enormously beneficial throughout the program and after graduation. This book deals with the effective design of visual representations of data, which is an essential skill in business analytics:
Storytelling with Data : A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals, by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, ISBN 978-1119002253
I hope that you have a great summer and I look forward to seeing you in August!
