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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Business Analytics for Decision Making by University of Colorado Boulder

4.6
stars
1,789 ratings

About the Course

In this course you will learn how to create models for decision making. We will start with cluster analysis, a technique for data reduction that is very useful in market segmentation. You will then learn the basics of Monte Carlo simulation that will help you model the uncertainty that is prevalent in many business decisions. A key element of decision making is to identify the best course of action. Since businesses problems often have too many alternative solutions, you will learn how optimization can help you identify the best option. What is really exciting about this course is that you won’t need to know a computer language or advanced statistics to learn about these predictive and prescriptive analytic models. The Analytic Solver Platform and basic knowledge of Excel is all you’ll need. Learners participating in assignments will be able to get free access to the Analytic Solver Platform....

Top reviews

SS

May 27, 2020

I would like to recommend this course to the business analyst aspirants. It is really intriguing and helps to develop analytical skills. The examples and assignments are perfect to train a beginner.

PA

Aug 11, 2020

I think this is a practical and insightful course for understanding what business analysis is and how models apply in realily by providing useful and familiar examples. Highly recommend this course

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301 - 325 of 438 Reviews for Business Analytics for Decision Making

By Sapna R

Oct 26, 2020

good

By Naveen

Sep 10, 2020

Nice

By ARTHI.V

Aug 4, 2020

Good

By Abed A

Jul 7, 2020

👍🏻

By Amar Y

Jul 3, 2020

Nice

By Mona A A

Jun 16, 2020

GOOD

By Apoorv S

Jun 10, 2020

cool

By Sandeepa

Jun 9, 2020

Good

By Harshini R

Jun 6, 2020

Good

By Gaurav R

May 26, 2020

Nice

By Sunglak S

Jun 21, 2018

Very

By Imaan S

Mar 5, 2021

.

By Harsh V

Jul 19, 2020

I

By Mira A A

May 12, 2020

-

By uyeyama, R

Sep 17, 2020

Excellent because this is a hands-on class where you download Excel files and do the analyses yourself. Note that you will need to download a proprietary (Frontline) "Analytics Solver" add-on for Excel that has a temporary 15-day license, so if your corporate network doesn't allow this, then you may need to do this on your personal computer. There were a few early examples that used Microsoft's built-in Solver add-on, but as the course progressed, you need to have

I removed one star for these reasons: 1) the ***Monte Carlo function DID NOT WORK***on my 15-day license, so I was stuck guessing answers on the quizzes for this topic; 2) Cells with distributions (e.g., Poisson) did not show up. 3) Instructional video did not go through some of the setup problems and alternate dialog windows that occur when using the temporary 15-day license. 4) The provided Excel files were generally already completely set up. It would've been nice to have a little bit more in-depth review and consolidation for how to build some of these cells (e.g., uncertain distributions) ourselves.

Overall despite these issues, I was able to learn quite a bit of what is possible, and drove in the fact that it is relatively easy to perform these analyses using the ASP addon, even if I am a beginner. Granted I could see the addon had an incredible depth to it and that the course did not even scratch the surface of what is possible, but the course did its job to show how to actually do these analyses.

Finally in the section before the ASP add-on was required, I really enjoyed seeing how to use stock Excel (with Micosoft's Solver enabled) to perform cluster analyses-- now I can do this myself with my stock Excel installation! Amazing and very cool.

By Mark H

Aug 15, 2019

Course expands upon previous material. The instruction is great, but the issues with ASP only get worse as you get deeper in this lesson. By the end, my Mac-based solver and web solver were not solving the problems at all, and worse, when they did, they solve it differently than what the instructor showed.

This course would benefit greatly from retooling to either use some combination of Python/R or to work wholly within Google Sheets and the Solver add-on there, which is free. At least everybody then would be able to use a free, consistent baseline (although I can't vouch that it would either be more stable or that Google won't change their own cost structure at some point in the future).

Other than that, the instruction is great and clear. We really blew through a lot of topics in this course, I'd love a very detailed course with heavier mathematics to really get a feel for the work involved in coming up with these analytics.

By Dan H

Jul 27, 2019

Quality of teaching is exceptional, however the only difficulty is that he seems to be using a higher quality version of ASP to me, therefore he is able to run models with 10,000 iterations, whereas I am capped at 2,500 unless I pay £1000 or so for an upgrade. Running models with the lower number gives similar results so I managed to scrape through. just worth considering in the future.

By Ashwin G S

Sep 20, 2020

It was a very good learning experience. But i had difficulty in downloading ASP as it was not affordable for students like us . But highly recommend this course to all Managers and MBA grads out there. All the excel sheets and video explanations were perfect and was relatable to real life scenarios. Thank you university of Colorado Boulders for making designing such a wonderful course.

By Louis C

Sep 7, 2020

This course is not the same as I thought. It's more simple and basic, it hasn't contained any of programming knowledge which is widely and generally used in practical problems. Building a model in excel can't offer much help, I think the course should bring in more difficult contents. All in all, this course is still great and helpful, and I will recommend it to my classmate.

By Imran N

Apr 10, 2020

Very detailed and nice explanation course, The best part is the questions are not easy and straightforward which makes it more fun to play around the data and come to the conclusion. 1 star i removed because the Analytic solver is a paid application which should be added to Excel, Should also provide options where we can do it without solver.

By Aditya R N

Apr 16, 2020

Excellent course. The modules are well defined and each topic is explained in a simplified manner. It would be better if there complex assignments/examples are also included which involve conceptualizing one's own model from a set of unclassified/unsegmented data. This would help course-takers to be able to make a model from scratch

By Alex K

Dec 31, 2020

Interesting and practical course. Only downside is the dependency on the Solver platform. I will not be able to use that in my daily work so an open source implementation would have been more helpful (I implemented some of the exercises in Python but that makes it very time intensive to do from scratch).

By Noa Y

Apr 19, 2020

The usability of XLMiner is simply awful. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to properly enable the add-ons in the ribbon in Excel even it's already properly installed, and how to be patient with every click with the setting to not to crush the software.

Other than that, all good!

By Ali N

Sep 30, 2017

Course is useful, helped in understanding Analytical models, types of Analytics but for Big Data these excel assignment cannot be applied on larger data set of Millions of Records. Overall it helped me in understanding to apply analytical tools in making good decisions for business.

By Ajay Z

Aug 13, 2020

Insightful and quite interactive assignments to implement concepts of the module with the inclusion of day to day business scenarios.Although, I think it would have been much cooler had I brushed up the mathematical-statistical concepts involved in the course.Thanks a ton!!