Bachelor of Business Administration

(2019-20)
 Predictive Analytics
(Course Code)
Spring Semester
Name of the Instructor: Dr. Samadrita Bhattacharyya

INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE

Today’s organizations need to make better and faster business decisions to survive the pressure of competitions.
Intelligent use of data sources can help the organizations unearth unanticipated new knowledge enabling better
decision making and discovery of new opportunities. For example, by analysing past transactions of sales,
customers can be classified according to their buying patterns and this may lead to an effective customer
relationship management and help in direct marketing. Thus, past data driven decision making is expected to
take a significant role highlighting the importance of predictive analytics. Several machine learning techniques
can be used to build predictive models by extracting patterns from large datasets. These models have several
practical applications including price prediction, risk assessment, predicting customer behavior, and document
classification. In this course we offer the students an understanding of predictive analytics techniques, their
applications in real business problems and demonstrate how the insights generated from these techniques could
be useful for managers in their decision making.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

At the end of this course students should be able to

 Understand the concepts of predictive analytics and data mining

 Learn how to prepare data for applying various predictive analytics models
 Learn about data reduction techniques
 Understand the basics of regression, classification, clustering, and association rule mining
 Apply the techniques on real datasets to address practical business problems using software packages
 Understand the evaluation of different classification techniques
 Select appropriate predictive analytics models
LEARNING GOALS

In addition to the specific course related objectives, this course is designed to achieve the following learning
goals

1. Critical and Integrative thinking: Each student will be able to identify key issues in predictive analytics,
develop a perspective that is supported with relevant information and integrative thinking, to draw and
assess conclusions. This learning goal will be measured through exams, cases and projects.
2. Awareness of Global Issues affecting - Information Systems Related Decisions: Each student will be
able to identify key relevant global issues and be able to analyze the impact of the global environment
on –Information Systems, as compared with domestic market related management issues. This learning
goal will be assessed through class discussion on various cases of successful technology applications.
3. Interpersonal Awareness and Working in Teams: Each student shall demonstrate an ability to work
effectively in a team, exhibiting behavior that reflects an understanding of the importance of individual
roles and tasks and the ability to manage conflict and compromise so that team goals are achieved. The
group-based case presentations and the group project will be a major component for measurement of
this learning goal.
4. Effective Presentation Skill: Each student shall be able to communicate verbally in an organized, clear,
persuasive manner and be a responsive listener. Participation during class interaction and class
presentations will be used to assess effective oral communication.

TEACHING METHOD

The course will have a judicious mix of lectures, cases, and hands on exercises. Use of case studies and
examples during the lecture will help the students understand the concepts and how they are applicable in real
business setting. Additional reading materials will help the students learn the concepts more clearly and in depth.

ATTENDANCE POLICY

As per JGU attendance policy.

GRADING

The course grade will be determined on the basis of

Evaluation Item Weightage Nature Completion status Release date of assignment

Group
10% Group Completed N/A
presentation
1st Assignment 30% Individual Deadline 15th May (EoD) 13th May (7 pm)
2nd Assignment 30% Individual Deadline 29th May (EoD) 27th May (7 pm)
3rd Assignment 30% Individual Deadline 10th June (EoD) 8th June (7 pm)
INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENTS

Each student shall submit three assignments on the pre-declared dates to the instructor. The assignments will
carry 30 marks each. The assignments would be working out some problems and/or case analysis. Each
submission should not be more than 1000 words.

ASSESSMENT CRITERIA

The assignments are individual in nature. Students are prohibited from discussing with and copying from each
other. Copying and plagiarism will lead to zero marks in that assignment. Late submissions will also invite zero
marks. Assessment would be based on the content of the submission (25%) and presentation and writing style
(5%). Each assignment may contain 4-5 questions pertaining to a given case or problem statement.

TEXT BOOK, COURSE PACKAGE AND OTHER READINGS

Text book: Data Mining for Business Intelligence: Concepts, Techniques and Applications in Microsoft Office
Excel with XLMiner. Shmueli, Patel, and Bruce. Wiley.

Chapters from this book are assigned as required readings in the class schedule below. The lectures will use the
book chapters as reference and may elaborate on some topics going beyond the scope of the text book. In that
case additional reading materials will be provided in class. Cases will be announced in the class.

Additional book for reference: Data mining: concepts and techniques, Jiawei Han and M. Kamber. Morgan
Kaufmann.
Software package: XLMiner.

CLASS SCHEDULE (Each session is of 90 minutes’ duration)

Session No-1 Introduction to the course

Objective of the session At the end of this session you will learn
 Concept of predictive analytics
 Application of predictive analytics
 Data mining
 Data mining vs. predictive analytics
Readings To be given in class
Case Title and Number NA
Pedagogy Lecture and class discussion

Session No-2 Essential concepts on Predictive analytics

Objective of the session At the end of this session you will learn
 Essential terminologies
 Predictive analytics as a process
 Key methods of predictive analytics
 Supervised and unsupervised leaning
  Steps in predictive analytics
Readings Chapter 1&2 of the text book.
Case Title/ Number NA
Pedagogy Lecture and class discussion

Session No-3 Data pre-processing I

Objective of the session At the end of this session you will learn
 Data preprocessing steps
 Handling categorical variables
 Overfitting
 Outliers, missing value, standardization
 Partitioning
Readings Chapter 2 of text book
Case Title/ Number NA
Pedagogy Lecture, class discussion and in-class exercises

Session No-4 Data pre-processing – hands on exercises

Objective of the session At the end of this session you will learn
 Hands on exercises on data preprocessing
Readings Chapter 2 of the text book
Case Title/ Number NA
Pedagogy Excel Miner hands on

Session No-5 & 6 Evaluating predictive performance

Objective of the session  Accuracy
 Lift, AUC
 Confusion matrix
 Misclassification cost
Readings Chapter 4 of text book
Case Title/ Number NA
Pedagogy Lecture and class discussion

Session No-7 & 8 Linear regression, Logistic regression, K-NN

Objective of the session  Concept
 Hands on exercises
Readings Chapter 5 & 8 of the text book
Case Title and Number NA
Pedagogy Lecture and demonstration on dataset

Session No- 9 & 10 Classification & Regression trees, Naïve-Bayes classification, Discriminant
analysis
Objective of the session  Concept
 Hands on exercises on dataset
Readings Chapter 6 & 7 of the text book
Case Title/ Number NA
Pedagogy Lecture and demonstration on dataset
 Session No- 11 & 12 Association rule mining
Objective of the session At the end of this session you will learn about
 Basic concept of association rule mining
 Discovering associations in transactional database
 Exercise on data set
Readings Chapter 11 of the text book
Case Title/ Number NA
Pedagogy Lecture and demonstration on dataset
Note: The content of the sessions could be slightly modified during the course depending on the receptivity and
pace of learning of the students in class.