Business Analytics

This course is about how organizations and their employees can collect, evaluate, and apply information to become better decision-makers. It starts with basic concepts regarding business data needs and ends with hands-on experience using Business Intelligence (BI) tools.

Get ready to learn practical techniques, including text processing, webpage scraping, and web development, and strategies to identify, approach, and solve problems in business and personal areas. This includes how to write computer programs to offer efficient solutions using a computer programming language. You leave this class with a portfolio of computer work to showcase to potential employers. (Students with strong programming skills can take Software Design at Olin College as an alternative.)

You start this course with a discussion on the philosophies of major data issues, which leads to your confidently analyzing disparities using a range of data types (spatial, panel, experimental, and observational) through the use of raw, real-world data sets. Discussions center on biases resulting from data, models, and algorithms.

This course is dedicated to grasping and applying advanced data mining tools for working with unstructured data and the use of analytical tools. You cover topics in the context of real-world applications, such as identifying innovation from unstructured patent text, determining descriptive topics in social media posts, finding communities in social networks, and classifying the severity of traffic accidents.

Improve your ability to critically analyze data, make better business decisions, and communicate effectively to your audience. And learn how to use analytics tools from the lens of a manager, a financial statement user, a tax analyst, an auditor, and a forensic accountant through software, and even work with professionals in the field.

The blockchain is the technology behind bitcoin and other forms of digital cash. Learn about the algorithms and protocols that enable its creation, the theory behind it, the potential of cryptocurrencies, how blockchains are used to enforce smart contracts, and how many other blockchain applications work.

After taking introductory finance courses, you may find yourself interested in topics such as the sales and trading of fixed-income securities, their related structured products, and fixed-income portfolio management. In this small-sized class, you build an understanding of those topics and receive firsthand experience using Bloomberg and other financial resources from the Cutler Center for Investments and Finance.

Gain skills to convert raw data into insights and analyze customer and marketing data to make informed marketing decisions in this business analytics for marketing course. The objective of this course is to introduce the benefits of using a systematic and analytical approach to marketing decision-making through automated software and hands-on learning.

Go beyond sabermetrics and fantasy football. As the role data plays in athletes becomes more prominent, statisticians become even more integral to a team’s roster. In this course, you dive deep into the quantitative principles, including probability, optimization, ranking, validation, and risk/reward judgments, that affect athletes, owners, trainers, administrators, and even fans. You use software packages to simulate real-world situations. This is one of the specialized courses that makes the Babson degree with a business analytics concentration one of the best degrees for a business analyst.