Business Analytics Courses

Browse the business analytics course descriptions below.

MSBA 6111 Business Essentials (3 credits)
Introduction to fundamental concepts and applications in core business disciplines such as financial accounting, marketing, operations, and strategy, with an emphasis on their connection to business analytics. The course aims to increase students' business acumen and allows them to effectively partner with key functional areas of an organization.
 

MSBA 6121 Introduction to Statistics for Data Scientists (3 credits)
This course is designed to develop statistical thinking, i.e., understanding variation and using data to identify possible sources of variation. Specific techniques include basic descriptive and inferential procedures and regression modelling. The emphasis is on understanding such analyses for their relevance to decision making.
 

MSBA 6311 Programming for Data Science (3 credits)
According to recent industry surveys, Python is one of the most popular tools used by organizations for data analysis. In this course, students explore the emerging popularity of Python for tasks such as general purpose computing, data analysis, website scraping, and data visualization. Students first learn the basics of the Python language, then learn how to apply functionality from powerful and popular data science-focused libraries. In addition, participants learn advanced programming techniques such as lambda functions and closures. Most of class time is spent completing practical hands-on exercises.
 

MSBA 6131 Introduction to Business Analytics in R (3 credits)
Introduction to key processes, building blocks, and use cases of business analytics through R, including data acquisition, engineering, visualization, basic concepts of exploratory and predictive analytics, and lifecycle of business analytics projects.
 

MSBA 6321 Data Management, Databases, and Data Warehousing (3 credits)
Fundamentals of database modeling and design, normalization; extract, transform and load; data cubes and setting up a data warehouse; data pre-processing, quality, integration, and stewardship issues; advances in database and storage technologies.
 

MSBA 6355 Building and Managing Teams (0.5 credits)
Examine individual, group, and organizational aspects of team effectiveness; learn and practice basic skills central to team management; develop appreciation for  team leadership function; learn the tools for effective team decision making and conflict management; develop general diagnostic skills for assessment of team issues within and across organizations and national boundaries.
 

MSBA 6411 Exploratory Data Analytics and Visualization (3 credits)
Fundamentals of data exploration; detecting relationships and patterns in data; cluster analysis, hierarchical and partition-based clustering techniques; rule induction from data; advances in multi-dimensional data visualization.
 

MSBA 6421 Predictive Analytics (3 credits)
Fundamentals of predictive modeling and data mining; assessing performance of predictive models; machine learning and statistical classification and prediction; logistic regression; decision trees; naïve Bayesian classifiers; support vector machine, ensemble learning, deep learning and their applications in structured and unstructured data.
 

MSBA 6331 Big Data Analytics (3 credits)
Exploring big data infrastructure and ecosystem, ingesting and managing big data, analytics with big data; Hadoop, MapReduce, Sqoop, Pig, Hive, Spark; SQL for Big data, Machine Learning for big data, Real-time Streaming for big data; cloud computing and other recent developments in big data.
 

MSBA 6441 Causal Inference via Econometrics and Experimentation (3 credits)
Controlled experiments in business settings, experiment design, A/B testing; specialized statistical methodologies; fundamentals of econometrics, instrument variable regression, and propensity score matching.
 

MSBA 6355 Building and Managing Teams (0.5 credits)
Examine individual, group, and organizational aspects of team effectiveness; learn and practice basic skills central to team management; develop appreciation for  team leadership function; learn the tools for effective team decision making and conflict management; develop general diagnostic skills for assessment of team issues within and across organizations and national boundaries.
 

MSBA 6141 Ethics and Data Privacy (1 credit)
Explore the moral, social, ethical, and legal ramifications of the choices made at the different stages of the data analysis pipeline, from data collection and storage to analysis and use. Students learn the basics of ethical thinking in data science, understand the history of ethical dilemmas in scientific work, study issues of fairness, transparency, and algorithmic bias associated with machine learning, and explore the distinct challenges associated with ethics and privacy in modern data science.
 

MSBA 6431 Advanced Issues in Business Analytics (3 credits)
Analysis of time series data, interpretation and forecasting; fundamentals of network analysis, mining digital media and social networks, community detection and friend recommendation; personalization technologies and recommender systems.
 

MSBA 6451 Optimization and Simulation for Decision Making (3 credits)
Fundamentals of decision analysis, optimization, linear and integer programming, risk analysis, heuristics, simulation, decision technologies.
 

MSBA 6345 Consultative Problem-Solving & Agile Management for Analytics Projects (1.5 credits)
Project management of full-stack analytics projects:  identifying deliverables and a methodology; gathering requirements (use cases, user stories); estimating and staffing the project; monitoring project status (earned value and visual methods); team roles in an agile project.
 

MSBA 6355 Building and Managing Teams (0.5 credits)
Examine individual, group, and organizational aspects of team effectiveness; learn and practice basic skills central to team management; develop an appreciation for team leadership function; learn the tools for effective team decision-making and conflict management; develop general diagnostic skills for assessment of team issues within and across organizations and national boundaries.
 

MSBA 6511 Business Analytics Experiential Learning (6 credits)
Hands-on application of analytics methodologies, techniques, and tools learned throughout the program to a real-world problem (such as consulting for a real business client in the area of marketing, strategy, operation/supply chain, information technology, finance, accounting, or human resources) as well as the development and presentation of results, interpretations, insights, and recommendations.

Explore Experiential Learning in the Carlson Analytics Lab
 

Electives (2 credits)