Data Analysis for Decision Making

This course is a part of MBA Core Curriculum, a 6-course MicroMasters series from edX.

In our information age, companies have access to unprecedented amounts information on customers--their behaviors, interests, and buying habits--and the markets in which they operate. Being able to analyze that data has become a critical skill for decision makers at every level of an organization. Today’s firms use data to detect market movement before it becomes a fully-fledged trend, helping them to stay ahead of the curve, tailor products and services to specific customer segments, determine when and when to enter markets, and differentiate themselves from competitors.

In this course, you will learn how to unlock the value of data to create and grow an organization. You will gain the analytical tools necessary to confidently describe the current state of areas critical to your business, predict the likelihood of an event occurring, compare two or more approaches to a business challenge, and determine if a phenomenon you are seeing is coincidence or a genuine insight. By the end of this course, you know how to make data-driven decisions to find advantages and stay competitive.

What you'll learn

• How to separate randomness from truly correlated and potentially causative variables.
• How to determine if certain variables (e.g., your firm’s spending on advertising or sales personnel) are related to or are driving other variables (e.g., your sales)
• How to generate forecasts of future demand, and how trends, seasonality, and extreme events, along with random noise impact our ability to predict the future
• How to effectively visualize these relationships using the latest in data visualization tools