GITAM School of International Business
GITAM University
OPEN-COURSE-GITAM UNIVERSITY
GU-BA1: BUSINESS ANALYTICS
Credits: 3
Faculty: Kamakshaiah Musunuru
Timing of the Programme: - Mon, 11:40 to 12:30 & Wednesday, 02:00PM to 04:00 PM
Objectives:
The objective of this course is to help students to appreciate the importance of
analytical skills in decision making, and develop skills in descriptive, predictive and
social media analytics.
UNIT I: Introduction & Descriptive Analytics
(Ch – 1, 2)
Introduction to Analytics - Evolution – Scope – Data types - Metrics & Data
classification – Measurement levels – data variables. Introduction to Excel – Basic
Excel skills - Excel Functions – Excel Add-ins for business analytics. Visualizing and
Exploring Data – Creating charts. Data queries – Tables, Sorting and Filtering.
UNIT II: Descriptive Statistics & Probability distributions
(Ch – 3, 4, 5)
Descriptive Statistics: Population & samples – measures of location – measures of
dispersion – measures of shape – Excel practice: Descriptive statistics for grouped
data – descriptive statistics for categorical data – Pivot tables for statistical analysis.
Introduction to Excel VBA: developing macros for descriptive analysis.
Basic concepts of probability – random variables and random distributions – discrete
probability distributions – continuous probability distributions – random sampling and
probability distributions – data modeling & goodness of fitting.
Excel practice for probability distributions.
UNIT III: Inferential & Predictive Analytics
(Ch – 6, 7)
Statistical sampling – estimating population parameters – sampling error – sampling
distributions – interval estimates – confidence intervals – using confidence intervals
for decision making – prediction intervals – confidence intervals and sample size.
Hypothesis testing – one-sample hypothesis tests – two –sample test of hypothesis –
analysis of variance (ANOVA) – chi-square test of independence.
Excel practice for inferential statistics.
UNIT IV: Predictive analytics and forecasting techniques
(Ch – 8, 9)
Modeling relationships & trends in data – simple linear regression – residual
analysis – multiple linear regression – building good regression models – regression
with categorical independent variables – non – linear regression.
Qualitative and judgmental forecasting – statistical forecasting models – forecasting
models for stationary time series – forecasting time series with seasonality – selecting
appropriate time-series-based forecasting models.
Excel & SPSS practice
UNIT V: Data Mining & Prescriptive Analytics
(Ch – 10, 11, 13, 14, 15)
The scope of data mining – Data exploration & reduction – classification – cause-and-
effect modeling. Spreadsheet modeling and analysis: strategies for predictive decision
modeling – implementing models on spreadsheets.
Building linear optimization models – implementing linear optimization models in
spreadsheets – solving linear optimization models – graphical interpretation of linear
optimization. Integer Optimization – Solving models with general integer variables –
integer optimization models with binary variables – mixed – integer optimization
models.
Excel Solver Practice
Textbook:
1. Business Analytics by James R. Evans, Pearson publications, New Delhi, 2013.
Note: Chapter numbers mentioned under each Unit are chapters in the text book used
for this course.