Lahore University of Management Sciences

DISC 420 Business Analytics

Fall Semester 2015
Instructors Shazib Shaikha (Pre-Mid), M. Adeel Zaffarb (Post-Mid)
Room No. (a) 4-12 (b) 4-03 (SDSB Building)
Office Hours (a) Tues. (2:30 4:30) excluding prayer times at LUMS Masjid
Email shazib@lums.edu.pk; adeel.zaffar@lums.edu.pk
Telephone (a) (042)35608025 (Internal: x. 8025); (b) (042)35608026 (Internal: x. 8026)
Secretary/TA (a) Hassan Haider; Ahmad Ali
TA Office Hours TBA
Course URL (if any) http://lms.lums.edu.pk (DISC 420 portal on this site)

COURSE BASICS
Credit Hours 3
Lecture(s) Nbr of Lec(s) Per Week 2 Duration 75 min. each

COURSE DISTRIBUTION
Core This is a core course for MGS majors
Elective Elective for all other majors
Open for Student Category Freshmen (ACF majors only)
Close for Student Category

COURSE DESCRIPTION
 Lahore University of Management Sciences
Throughout the Management Science degree, students have already been exposed to a number of statistical and analytical
techniques such as decision analysis, regression, optimization, etc. However, before these can be practically deployed as
business analytics or business intelligence (i.e. analytical tools and techniques that rely on a business data to solve business
problems) three things remain. These three things, described as follows, are the focus of this course:

1. Understanding the systems and their organization to support business analytics: Why use a data warehouse on top
of a regular database? What components and processes have todays organizations developed to practically deal with
capture and dissemination of business intelligence? (The top left circle in the diagram above)
2. Data mining techniques: Certain analytical techniques rely on computerized machine learning. There are supervised
versus unsupervised learning and classification versus association. This course will approach the subject from a
business perspective: what is the objective of the technique? What business problems can it resolve? And mostly
hands-on application of the tools. (the overlap between information systems circle and statistics circle)
3. Integration of business analytics topics: No real-world problem comes with a label such as Use regression or the a
priori algorithm. After studying data-mining techniques, the student should now have a full menu of approaches at
their disposal. It is the intelligence of the business professional that guides them in choosing which technique to
employ. Hence, this course aims to help students practice this judgment call at a basic level in various situations
essentially using a case-based approach.

COURSE PREREQUISITE(S)
i. DISC 112 (Computers & Problem Solving)
ii. DISC 212 (Intro to Management Science)
iii. DISC 320 (Qualitative & Quantitative Methods in Business)
iv. DISC 321 (Decision Analysis )
v. Or equivalent

COURSE LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. Be aware of typical business intelligence systems components, processes and organizational architecture
2. Learn about supervised and unsupervised data-mining at a general level (not about details of the algorithms used but
their benefits and limits, their required inputs and expected outputs and how to evaluate their performance).
3. Be familiar with the vocabulary of data mining techniques, e.g. in text-mining what is a corpus.
4. Learn how to prioritize and choose between the analytical techniques across the degree.

LEARNING OUTCOMES
Upon completion of the course, students will be able to

1. Understand the typical vocabulary used across various business intelligence systems, especially with respect to data-
mining.
2. Avoid confusions created by proprietary names of business intelligence systems and components (e.g. SAP Business
Objects, Teradata, Microstrategy, Zambeel, etc.) and understand their functionality regardless of organization they work
for.
3. Select between descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytical techniques according to the business problem at hand,
or at least know who to refer to within their business intelligence organization in order to solve this problem.
4. Efficiently self-train to apply OR guide technical staff in applying data-mining techniques when they engage with the
business intelligence systems and organization of modern businesses to solve typical real-world business problems.
 Lahore University of Management Sciences
General Learning Goals & Objectives
Goal 1 Effective Written and Oral Communication
Objective: Students will demonstrate effective writing and oral communication skills
Goal 2 Ethical Understanding and Reasoning
Objective: Students will demonstrate that they are able to identify and address ethical issues in an organizational context.
Goal 3 Analytical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills
Objective: Students will demonstrate that they are able to identify key problems and generate viable solutions.
Goal 4 Application of Information Technology
Objective: Students will demonstrate that they are able to use current technologies in business and management context.
Goal 5 Teamwork in Diverse and Multicultural Environments
Objective: Students will demonstrate that they are able to work effectively in diverse environments.
Goal 6 Understanding Organizational Ecosystems
Objective: Students will demonstrate that they have an understanding of Economic, Political, Regulatory, Legal,
Technological, and Social environment of organizations.
Major Specific Learning Goals & Objectives
Goal 7 (a) Discipline Specific Knowledge and Understanding
Objective: Students will demonstrate knowledge of key business disciplines and how they interact including application to
real world situations (Including subject knowledge).
Goal 7 (b) Understanding the science behind the decision-making process (for MGS Majors)
Objective: Students will demonstrate ability to analyze a business problem, design and apply appropriate decision-support
tools, interpret results and make meaningful recommendations to support the decision-maker

Indicate below how the course learning objectives specifically relate to any program learning goals and objectives.

PROGRAM LEARNING GOALS AND COURSE LEARNING OBJECTIVES COURSE ASSESSMENT ITEM
OBJECTIVES
Goal 1 Effective Written and Oral Objective #4 Exam
Communication
Goal 2 Ethical Understanding and
Reasoning
Goal 3 Analytical Thinking and All objectives Lab Assignments, Exam
Problem Solving Skills
Goal 4 Application of Information All objectives Lab Assignments, Exam, Project
Technology
Goal 5 Teamwork in Diverse and
Multicultural Environments
Goal 6 Understanding Organizational Objective #1 Quizzes, Exam
Ecosystems
Goal 7 (a) Discipline Specific All objectives All items
Knowledge and Understanding
Goal 7 (b) Understanding the Objectives #2 & #4 All items
science behind the decision-making
process

GRADING BREAKUP AND POLICY

Quizzes .................................................................. 20%
Assignments (In-Class + Other) ............................. 40%
Mid-Term Examination (on computer) ................. 20% NOTE: PLEASE READ QUIZ POLICY BELOW
Final Exam (Project Presentation) ........................ 20%
 Lahore University of Management Sciences
EXAMINATION DETAIL

Yes/No: ...................................................................... YES

Mid Term Combine/Separate: .................................................... Separate
(In-Class) Duration: .................................................................... 75 minutes (Tentatively)
Exam Specifications: .................................................. Closed Book/Closed Notes; Lab-based Exam
................................................................................... (Will need trading lab where the licensed software is
................................................................................... installed)

Quizzes

Petitions in general: Petitions should be submitted along with proper documentation (e.g. a medical certificate certifying illnesses
or OSA certifying participation in OSA activity) and shall be approved on case-by-case basis. NOTE: OSA activities are planned
events SO PLEASE BRING THESE (or at least e-mail a scan) BEFORE THE CLASS YOU PLAN TO MISS. Later OSA petitions will be
assumed not to be genuine.

Quizzes: To keep the number of quizzes to a minimum, we reserve the right to use un-announced quizzes. Quizzes will mostly be
objective-based in order to test understanding of vocabulary throughout the course or if they are tied to a case discussion, they
may be subjective in that event. An n-1 policy will be applied only if the number of quizzes > 4. A missed (without petition
approval) quiz will automatically be graded zero (0).

You are required to attend with your designated section. Neither quiz nor assignments can be transferred to any other section,
especially as the Learning Management System follows the Zambeel sectioned roll no. It is your responsibility to ensure that
your details on LMS & Zambeel are up to date.

COURSE OVERVIEW
RECOMMENDED
Sess. # TOPICS SESSION OBJECTIVE(S)
READINGS
a. Build a mental map of
Introduction to Business Intelligence & Business
1. CC, Ch. 1 the course
Analytics
b. Contract for the course
a. How are the various
Case: Managing with Analytics at P&G
levels of analytics
Case
1. How far into the levels of analytics (seen in last employed in a modern
2. session) have Procter & Gamble progressed? organization
Managing with Analytics at
b. What is the role of
2. Should Torres over-ride the forecast? What P&G
analysts & managers in
is the weakness in the BI if you say, Yes?
the modern organization
CC, Ch. 3 Generic concepts in Data
3. Data Visualization Basic
Visualization
Data Visualization Exercise Albright et. al. Section on Application of data
4.
Case: King Kola Beverages Ltd. Pivot Tables visualization concepts

5. a. Advanced approaches to
Advanced Data Visualization: Tutorial Slides: visualizing data
the Grammar of Graphics Grolemund, Visualizing b. Introduction to R and its
6.
(Introduction to R, R Studio & ggplot2 package) Data graphing packages

7. Business Intelligence Architectures, Data Learning Objective #1, 3

Warehousing & Big Data V, Ch. 2 & Ch.3 Learning Objective #1, 3
8.
(Demonstration of Microstrategy & SAS)
Data Mining > Unsupervised Learning > Cluster Analysis:
9. CC, Ch. 6, Sec 6.3, p. 256
Introduction to Cluster Analysis Hierarchical & K-Means
 Lahore University of Management Sciences
Data Mining > Unsupervised Learning > Cluster Analysis:
10. (review last)
Cluster Analysis (in R) Hierarchical & K-Means in R
Data Mining > Unsupervised Learning > CC, Ch. 6, Sec 6.3, Association Rules Mining
11.
Introduction to Association Rules p. 265 A priori algorithm
Data Mining > Unsupervised Learning > Association Rules Mining
12. (review last)
Association Rules (in R) A priori algorithm in R
Data Mining > Unsupervised Learning > Revision Assignment
13.
Association & Clustering (Lab Assignment)

14. MID-TERM

Data Mining > Supervised Learning Learning Objective #1, 3

Introduction to the process of supervised learning - CC, Ch. 6, Sec 6.4, Supervised learning:
15.
Partitioning Data, Classification Accuracy, p. 269 classification techniques
Prediction Accuracy
16. Data Mining > Supervised Learning Learning Objective #1, 3
- CC, Ch. 6, Sec 6.4,
k-Nearest Neighbors (k-NN) Classification and Classification techniques: k-
17. p. 277
Prediction NN
18. Data Mining > Supervised Learning Classification techniques:
- CC, Ch. 6, Sec 6.4,
19. Classification Trees trees
p. 283, 293
20. Regression Trees
Data Mining > Supervised Learning - CC, Ch. 6, Sec 6.4, Supervised Learning:
21.
Logistic Regression p. 299 Predictive modeling
22. Learning Objectives # 1, 3
Data Mining > Supervised Learning
PB, Ch 6 (Section 6.8) p. 158 Introduction to Neural
23. Introduction to Neural Networks
Networks
All Learning Objectives
24. Current trends in Data Mining and beyond Current trends in mining
- Social Network Analysis To be distributed later online data on social
25. - Text Mining networking sites using
network connections and text
26. Comprehensive In-Class Exercises
27. Comprehensive In-Class Exercises
28. Review

TEXTBOOK(S)/SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS

PLEASE OBTAIN THE COURSE PACK from the library for this course as there are multiple sources which have been used for
the readings. Some of the textbook abbreviations used are explained below:

[V] C. Vercellis (2009) Business Intelligence: Data Mining & Optimization for Decision Making Wiley.
[CC] J. Camm, J. Cochran, M. Fry, et. al. (2015) Essentials of Business Analytics, Cengage.
[PB] Stephen G. Powell and Kenneth R. Baker Management Science, The Art of Modeling with Spreadsheets, Wiley, 4 th Ed