QUANTITATIVE METHODS IN BUSINESS, BUS 1B COURSE SYLLABUS
Fall 2015
Class Hours: Friday 8:00-9:30, except as rescheduled according to the university calendar
Location: Pollack Fine Arts 001
Dr. William J. Oliver 781-728-9455
Email: [email protected] Please put “BUS 1B” in the subject line
Office: Lemberg 11 (in the basement, by the Coke machine)
Office Hours: Tuesday & Friday, 11:00 AM-1:30 PM Course Objectives: This course prepares students who are not especially oriented towards math to excel in both courses at Brandeis and work after graduation. Upon successful completion of this course, students will have “number crunching” abilities their future employers will expect of them. These will allow them to excel in future Brandeis business courses as well. Students will learn business analytics using the industry-standard tool, Excel. In addition to conducting analysis, students will learn to create tables and charts to present results of analysis in powerful, meaningful tables and charts. After creating them, students will learn how to move them into MSWord and PowerPoint documents. Underscoring everything else in the course, this course will improve students’ ability to describe the findings of business analytics. Students will practice describing their own findings, and assessing the findings of others. This will be through weekly write-ups of others’ graphs, answers to questions in the practice sets and midterm, and through the final presentation. This section of BUIS1B offers a slightly different focus from the other one here at Brandeis. In this section students will use Microsoft Excel to learn analytics; the other section will use Stata. Excel is NOT the best tool for statistics: it offers only a few statistical tools, eliminates some of its weak tools from the Mac version and even has a few errors in the software. However, it is the unquestioned market leader for conducting business analytics. One estimate is that it has 750 million users worldwide1. Purists do not even include Excel in the “statistical tools” industry, in which Stata is widely recognized as the #3 or #4 player (completing with SAS, SPSS and R). So why learn statistics using Excel?—because for 99% of you Excel will be the only tool you will use in your jobs after graduation. Grading: 10% participation, 30% weekly practice sets, 30% midterm exam, and 30% final paper Participation: Students learn best when they talk about what they are learning. Questions, challenges, comments and the like are expected. This is not a lecture class. You are expected to learn the basics through the readings and weekly practice sets. In class, we will talk about what you have learned. Active participation will lead to a good participation grade. Since this course is based on sharpening each other’s skills in class, attendance is required; no absences will be excused. Weekly text readings You will read 30-40 pages each week before the class session. The lecture will review the material. Then the practice set will allow you to test you understanding. Weekly practice sets Each week a practice set will be due at 8AM the day of class. We will review the practice set during class. Late assignments will not be graded. No exceptions. These are designed to require about one hour each week. Mid-term exam Will be completed in class using your computer. If you do not have a laptop loaded with Excel, arrange with the professor in advance. This will be a challenging mid-term, covering all of the material to date. Final presentation Analysis conducted and presented in teams of 2 or 3 using a data set you select from public sources. The project will demonstrate ability to find and import data, cleanse, conduct analysis
1 For example see: http://r4stats.com/2015/06/09/estimating-analytics-software-market-share-by-counting-books/, also http://r4stats.com/articles/popularity/ of the data, communicate the findings, and interpret what they mean. Detail instructions will follow. Text and Software Required: Levine and Stephan, Even You Can Learn Statistics and Analytics, 2015, Pearson. This is available on line for about $20. Students are expected to bring to every class session a Windows computer with Excel version 2013. If you do not have Excel, it can be purchased as a package or Office 365, a cloud service. Do not use versions earlier than 2010 or non-licensed versions. Mac Computers This course (like Brandeis’ ITS) supports Windows computers. If you have a Macintosh computer make sure you have Excel version 2011. You will find that some of the Excel commands and capabilities are different from Excel for Windows. The course will not be geared to Mac, though you can do well in the course with one—with a bit of adaptation. Prerequisites: none Before the first class session: Make sure Excel is loaded in your computer and you know how to launch it. Complete the homework as indicated for the first session, below. Seating Please select a seat on the first day of class, and use that seat for each class session. This helps the professor get to know you (i.e. it helps establish your class participation grade). Please bring the name tent that you create the first day. Academic Honesty You are expected to be honest in all of your academic work. Instances of alleged dishonesty will be forwarded to the Brandeis Office of Academic Integrity. Potential sanctions include failure in the course and suspension from the University. For the University policy, please see section 5 of the Rights and Responsibilities Handbook. Special Accommodation If you are a student with a documented disability on record at Brandeis University and wish to have a reasonable accommodation made for you in this class, please see me immediately. Course Calendar (subject to change) Week Subject Due before Class 1 Fundamentals of Statistics Load Excel, order text 8/28 Presenting data in tables and charts Presenting data in tables and charts in Text: Chapters 1 & 2 PowerPoint and MSWord Graphing practice set 9/4 (1) 2 Descriptive statistics Chapter 3 Importing data Graphing practice set 9/11 (2) 3 Note: Tuesday, not Monday Chapter 4 Probability Descriptive statistics 9/18 practice set 4 Comparing two distributions Chapter 5 Probability practice set 9/25 (1) 10/2 Midterm prep Chapter 8 Week Subject Due before Class t-test practice set 5 10/9 Midterm exam 6 Simple linear regression Chapter 10 Linear regression 10/16 practice set (1) 7 Multiple regression Chapter 11 Linear regression 10/23 practice set (2) 8 Importing, cleansing and manipulating data Linear regression practice set (3) Data import readings 10/30 (LATTE) 9 Stata and Qlik View demonstrations Data import practice set Load Qlik View and Stata applications 11/6 (instructions on LATTE 10 11/13 Final presentations 11 11/20 Final presentations 12 11/27 No Class -- Thanksgiving 13 12/4 TBD