About the Field of Analytics

Modern Businesses Rely on Data Analytics to Make Smarter Decisions

Cloud computing, the internet of things, and mobile devices. Transactions, sensors, cards, and clicks. The world is generating massive quantities of data. Business analytics is about turning that raw data into meaningful insights and better solutions. Join the field and you’ll use data to:

Find Answers

Analytics is more than crunching numbers. It starts with asking questions that matter to the business: How do we develop better products? become more efficient? beat the competition? Data holds many answers if you have the skills to find them.

Discover Patterns

Analytics pros are modern explorers, detectives, and entrepreneurs. They use different techniques, including data visualization, to uncover patterns. Their discoveries help businesses understand what’s really happening in a complex world.

Predict What's Next

How many customers can we expect? What will revenues look like next quarter? Which accounts are in danger of being lost? Everyone wants to predict the future. With data and the right methods, that’s often possible. A business analytics education teaches you how.

msba analytics graduate student Karthik Mahendran

Detect the Cause

The ultimate question is often, Why? Being able to prove that one thing truly causes another to happen is incredibly powerful … and elusive. Data science and analytics put the big answers within reach.

The Skills to Succeed in Analytics

The Carlson School's business analytics graduate programs teach you the skills you need to enter the field and succeed. Here you'll learn how to:

Identify opportunities to solve problems using data

Define business problems and develop analytics solutions

Harvest, clean, and engineer data for analysis

Write and run the code that turns data into useful information

Explore data to find answers, insights, and evidence

Use algorithms and machine learning to predict business outcomes

Run experiments to test hypotheses and determine causation

Visualize and communicate with data

Manage data analytics projects from start to finish

Make an Impact Even Before You Graduate

Carlson MSBA students gain solid experience with full-stack analytics projects—even before they graduate. Experiential learning opportunities get students out of the classroom and into the real world, working with real clients. Here are a few examples of the hands-on analytics consulting projects our students have done: