Descriptive Analytics for Business

Catalog description

BAN 830 explores the use of descriptive analytics concepts, tools, and techniques throughout a wide range of business scenarios and problems. Initially focusing on the application of traditional descriptive analytics techniques to answer the question, "What happened?," the course provides opportunities for students to perform spreadsheet- and programming-based data acquisition, cleaning, manipulation, and visualization using data derived from various business contexts to inform business leaders' decisions. Later, students progress to applying advanced statistical techniques and concepts including descriptive measures, sampling and estimation, and inference in both spreadsheet and programming environments. The course concludes with a bridge to predictive analytics as students apply linear and multiple linear regression to business-related data in search of relationships among input and output variables. Software packages, concepts, and business applications will vary and evolve to keep pace with technology, theory, and instructor interests.