Chevron Left
Back to Operations Analytics

Learner Reviews & Feedback for Operations Analytics by University of Pennsylvania

4.7
stars
5,068 ratings

About the Course

This course is designed to impact the way you think about transforming data into better decisions. Recent extraordinary improvements in data-collecting technologies have changed the way firms make informed and effective business decisions. The course on operations analytics, taught by three of Wharton’s leading experts, focuses on how the data can be used to profitably match supply with demand in various business settings. In this course, you will learn how to model future demand uncertainties, how to predict the outcomes of competing policy choices and how to choose the best course of action in the face of risk. The course will introduce frameworks and ideas that provide insights into a spectrum of real-world business challenges, will teach you methods and software available for tackling these challenges quantitatively as well as the issues involved in gathering the relevant data. This course is appropriate for beginners and business professionals with no prior analytics experience....

Top reviews

AA

Jul 1, 2020

Operations Analytics helps me to understand how to solve Newsvendor problem by statisti, forecast SUK and predict the seasonal performance. Great lessions and thanks so much for the three Instructors!

EW

Apr 26, 2020

Excellente course. Very challenging especially for beginners. The motivation to achieve my final goal of reinventing myself professionally, makes every challenge a welcome experience. Thanks Coursera!

Filter by:

751 - 775 of 957 Reviews for Operations Analytics

By Chris B

•

Oct 16, 2022

The first week is too much information and each session is too long: Having the professor talk at you for 40+ minutes is just miserable and I nearly quit. After week 1, things get much better: the professor breaks things down, shows the work clearly, and then reiterates it in later session.

A few other notes:

-- If a session is going to include a spreadsheet or other dowloand, then it should either be attached to the course or identified at the beginning, so you can go get it before you start the session.

-- The quiz's expects you to remember too much. Just give us the damn data sets or provide the slide you're referencing with the conditions/variables/etc. Or, link back to the lesson. If not, then you're not testing understanding, you're testing my ability to remember random numbers -- something that I will never be expected to do in real-life.

By Maprang S

•

Feb 13, 2021

Not bad for someone with no business background like me who doesn't utilize Excel often in my job as I'd adopt python to crunch a massive amount of data instead. However, Excel does do an excellent job for a small amount of data, and when you're proficient at it, you'd be better at mingling with those business degree people at work. Don't be deterred by the lengthy videos as the concepts presented are intuitive and not very difficult (given that you're not bad at junior high/ high school level maths), so you can certainly skip some parts.

Some downsides about this course: I think it's too easy. The quizzes are too easy and the students do not have an opportunity to create their own Excel simulations because these are not required to pass the course. Watching how someone does Excel passively doesn't guarantee that you'd be able to do the same.

By Anwar R

•

Dec 30, 2015

The course provides good overview of forecasting and operation analytics. Some operation research techniques like linear programming, network optimization, decision tree (not to confuse with decision tree from machine learning field), and simulation are nicely presented. Solver plugin of excel is used for all those problems which makes the analytic content becomes more concrete.

The presentation is from very, very high level point of view though, and lack from depth. It lacks of depth from business point of view, but also from analytic point of view. The quizzes are much too easy given the content. I expect that the quizz would be harder than example given in the course, but it's unfortunately the reverse.

By Alina Z

•

Feb 5, 2020

I agree with the majority of comments about the general quality of the course materials and quality of teaching. This course would probably be suitable for those with 0 prior experience in excel, statistics and optimisation problems. Although tools presented were overall useful and easy to use (everything can be done in Excel), I think all of the teaching material could be summarised in 1-hour lecture. I had to watch the videos at x1.75 speed. In my opinion, the course could be also improved by adjusting the depth and complexity of the weekly quizzes as currently they are very basic.

By Markus N

•

Jan 23, 2016

A great course, with good material and very smart and likeable professors.

For improvement: Sometimes it is hard to follow, slow down from time to time to review concepts that have been introduced + I would appreciate if there is follow up material at the end of the course to answer the "what's next" question, after finishing. Also think about different Assignments for grading. I found the quizzes too easy (in part).

By Gabriel R d S

•

Nov 3, 2019

I believe the course was truly worth it, but the lack of didactics from the first professor was really discouraging, he basically only read whatever was write on the power point presentation, other than that, I believe Wharton should have kept the course and the answers to students questions updated. Still, is worth it, if you plan on developing analytical skills.

By Sachin S

•

Sep 2, 2017

Prof. Senthil can definitely improve on delivering the lecture as it was very deflating. Reading out the slide content is not exactly a good way to put forth concepts. Prof. Sergei and Gan did a fantastic job in explaining the concept and demonstrated using excel perfectly. Learned a lot of new concepts and I am able to allocate the same in realistic environment.

By Yogi W

•

Sep 15, 2017

Great course! Motivates students to learn more about (non-) linear optimization, simulations, distributions, and decision trees. Satisfactorily thorough with references to further materials when one wants to deepen their understanding and easily understandable for people with no background. Thank you for your course.

By synthia n

•

Mar 4, 2018

THis is an amazing course and i learnt so much. WHat i really enjoyed about this course is the exercises and that you can practice as you learn. I work in the retail industry so i found the case studies really relevant and easy to understand and hence had the context needed to solve the problem! Great work Wharton!

By murali k

•

Aug 21, 2016

Provides a understanding of simulation and optimization using very simple examples. Perfect for beginners, not so much if you looking for more in-depth discussion to solve complicated problems.

Also, Week 3 and Week 4 test more on your Excel skills rather than actual simulation and optimization knowledge.

By Subhash R

•

Feb 23, 2018

A must-do course for people managing resources (both men & material). This course will help in analysing data effectively which in turn can be used for taking key business decisions. "Solver" & "Data Simulation" are 2 things which I have found very useful in this course.

By Tiago F T C

•

Dec 30, 2016

Great course! However I think that the evaluation quiz is confusing, because we always need to pick up previous class data to solve the problems. In the future consider to put all data in the quiz. With this problem corrected, I would give a 5 star rating.

By William C

•

Feb 13, 2018

Very good introduction course to some of the fundamental problems outlining operation analytics. I especially liked the walk-through excel exercises and the homework exercises offered just the right amount of challenge for someone to grasp the concept.

By surya c

•

Mar 5, 2019

EXCELLENT COURSE FOR BEGINEERS, THIS COURSE IS ALL ABOUT DECISION MAKING IN DIFFERENT SETTINGS, AS EACH PROGRESSES THE COURSE MATERIAL TURNS VERY MUCH INTREASTING. ALL THE PROFESSORS ARE GREAT AT EXPLAING EVERY DETAIL FOR AWESOME UNDERSTANDING

By Pablo E

•

May 20, 2020

Not a 5 star because there isn't a complex case-study where a student might see a real world operations research problem being solved by everything learned during the course. Would have been interesting to top it off with something like that!

By Anita L

•

Aug 27, 2020

I learned a lot - it would have been helpful if the quiz questions gave the data of the scenarios (I was in the quiz but hadn't downloaded the slides so some of the calculations were difficult because I didn't recall the pricing scenarios)

By ABHISHEKBAGHEL

•

Sep 12, 2018

For basics this course is good. It would be better to make it a 6 week course and extend series after news vendor application or on topic where we use different methods of forecasting and optimize the results as per objective function.

By Salma A

•

Apr 18, 2019

The course was very fruitful and informative, the first week however was not presented efficiently which gives a wrong impression about the course. I suggest replacing the videos of the first week with shorter more informative ones.

By Bilal F

•

Feb 6, 2021

The course is very informative and engaging with the excel simulations. However, different professors get higher ratings, as expected when you sign up for an English-taught course the level of native English is expected to be high.

By Dhairya J

•

Aug 25, 2017

It was an amazing learning relaredto operations and came to know about the great excel tools for simulation which can be used for solving many problems and well explained by professors with the detailed knowledge

By Denzel J S

•

Oct 9, 2020

this was painstakingly difficult to study but i did have fun solving all the problems, i just wished there's a way they can explain where they find or how to solve the probability needed to answer the questions

By Bhavya V

•

Jun 17, 2020

Overall this course was amazing, One thing i would like to point out is that XLMiner Plugins are not further allowed in google sheets, please update it and provide alternative for the same. Thank you so much.

By David A K

•

Jan 1, 2021

Very insightful. Combining simulation, solver and decision trees is very interesting and can be applied to diverse business problems. I am most grateful and loads of thanks to the instructors. Good job done.

By Mai T

•

Nov 4, 2021

Excellente course. Very challenging especially for beginners. The motivation to achieve my final goal of reinventing myself professionally, makes every challenge a welcome experience. Thanks Coursera!

By Enzo A

•

May 19, 2016

3 1/2 stars

+ Good lectures

+ Valuable introduction to solver and stochastic modeling

~ Little beyond basics: for a Wharton specialization we should add more depth

~ Quizzes are at least a bit too easy