Cambridge Judge Business School

Executive Education

BUSINESS ANALYTICS:
DECISION MAKING
USING DATA
 Business Analytics

OVERVIEW

“ We all need to develop a mindset of

living with constant change. Data-driven
projects won’t end anymore but will
constantly evolve and iterate. We will be
continually testing, experimenting and
changing things as our customers’ and
clients’ needs and desires change.
“
Dr David Stillwell
Reader, Computational Social Science Academic
Director of the Psychometrics Centre
University of Cambridge Judge Business School

In the digital economy, being able to make decisions
informed by data is not optional—it is essential.
Organisations that make decisions based on data simply
perform better.
The Business Analytics programme provides you with
the tools you need to put data to work: how to set up
experiments, how to collect data, how to learn from data
and make decisions to how to navigate the
organisational, legal and ethical issues involved in
data-based decision making. The programme teaches
widely-used frameworks of business analytics: biases,
experimentation, descriptive analytics, prescriptive
analytics, predictive analytics. Participants then
implement the frameworks they have learned through
assignments. You will join a global and diverse group of
participants in the discussion boards where you share
your perspectives on the issues being discussed with
other participants and seek their views.
The programme includes case studies and examples
from Google, Netflix, UPS, ePhone, NYC Taxis, Zipcar,
Talk Talk and others.
WHO IS THIS PROGRAMME FOR?
This programme is designed for managers across
different functions who are interested in
implementing analytics projects at their organisation.
It provides business managers with the techniques
needed to transform their organisation into a
data-driven organisation. The assignments and cases
in the programme focus on interpreting the results of
analysis and taking decisions based on those analysis.
The programme will also include demonstration of
some advanced analytics tools such as TensorFlow.
The programme does not require coding.

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 Business Analytics

ABOUT CAMBRIDGE JUDGE BUSINESS SCHOOL

The reputation of Cambridge Judge Business School is internationally celebrated as a provider of stimulating
management education, with a particular emphasis on entrepreneurship and innovation management. With a
world-class faculty of over 70 members and a philosophy of collaboration, the School is a place where people from
many disciplines meet and share ideas – policy makers, entrepreneurs, leaders of industry, regulators, not-for-profit
organisations and academics.

Cambridge Judge Business School offers a distinctive approach born out of the University of Cambridge way, where
its programmes are based on leading-edge research from its 19 research centres, and are delivered by world-class
faculty. The School leverages the unrivalled resources of the wider University, giving participants a learning
experience of unrivalled quality, intensity, relevance and challenge.

Cambridge Judge Business School Executive Education

Cambridge Judge Business School Executive Education covers a wide range of open enrolment and customised
programmes. These programmes are designed for organisations, business professionals, managers, leaders, and
executives from many different functions who strive for professional and personal growth. Programmes are
developed to help executives and organisations from both the private and the public sectors achieve operational
excellence and results.

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Cambridge ideas have
changed the world.
Over 100 Nobel
Prizes have been
awarded to affiliates
of the University of
Cambridge.
 Business Analytics

PROGRAMME FACULTY

Dr Nektarios (Aris) Oraiopoulos

University Lecturer in Operations Management
Director of the MPhil in Strategy, Marketing & Operations Programme

PhD (Georgia Institute of Technology), BEng (National Technical University of Athens)

Dr Oraiopoulos earned his PhD from Georgia Institute of Technology. His research is
focused on understanding how organisations make high-stakes decisions, such as
whether to invest in a new project, when to terminate a project that is not
performing well, what data they can leverage to become more innovative, and what
organisational structures they should put in place to empower a sound
decision-making process. He has worked with organisations across various
industries and sectors, including AstraZeneca, British Telecom, HSBC, Johnson &
Johnson, and the Abu Dhabi Police Force.

Dr David Stillwell
Reader, Computational Social Science Academic Director of the
Psychometrics Centre University of Cambridge Judge Business School

BSc, MSc, PhD (University of Nottingham)

David studies the links between big data and psychology; his research with 6
million social media users found that the computer can predict a user’s
personality as accurately as their spouse can. Follow up research found that
personalizing an advert to the recipient’s psychology is more effective than
generic ads.

David has also published research using various big data sources to show that
spending money on products and services that match one’s personality leads to
greater life satisfaction, that people tend to date others who have a similar
personality, and that people who swear seem to be more honest. David is
currently pursuing research with companies’ internal data for People Analytics.

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 Business Analytics

PROGRAMME HIGHLIGHTS

The programme includes video lectures, discussions, live online teaching sessions and assignments. We expect
participants to dedicate 4 – 6 hours per week over the 11 weeks of the programme. The programme is organised
around 6 key areas of business analytics.

Decision Biases Descriptive Analytics

Identify the types of biases in a Be able to collect, clean, and
decision making process and learn describe the data you have,
how to ask for the right including the summary statistics
information

Big Data Opportunities Experimentation

Identify what big data means to Design experiments to gather
you and what you can do with it meaningful data to make data
driven decisions

Predictive Analytics Organisational, Ethical and

Use machine learning tools/models,
identify neural networks, and
analyse data to optimise decisions
for your business
Legal Issues
Identify organisational issues that you
will need to consider when making
decisions; identify the legal and ethical
issues behind gathering, storing, and
using data

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 Business Analytics

SYLLABUS

Module 1: Decision Biases

• Decision traps
• Benefits of analytics

Module 2: Descriptive Analytics

• What is data mining
• Web scraping
• Application Programming Interface (API)
• What data can you find?
• What do you think about the data you found?
• Amazon and APIs
• Data cleaning
• Descriptive statistics
• Normal and not normal distributions
• Effect size and confidence intervals

Module 3: Big Data Opportunities

• What does Big Data mean to you?
• Introduction to Big Data
• What is Big Data?
• Four Vs of big data – volume, variety, velocity and veracity
• Challenges for big data
• Big Data opportunities

Module 4: Experimentation
• The gold standard
• Making experimentation work
• Overcoming barriers

Module 5: Predictive Analytics I: Machine Learning

• Machine learning vs hypothesis testing
• Machine learning in practice
• Model over-fitting

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 Business Analytics

• Machine learning algorithms

• Supervised machine learning
• Decision trees & random forest
• Support vector machines
• Hyperparameter optimisation
• Ensemble methods
• Interpret an analysis
• Machine learning in the real world

Module 6: Predictive Analytics II: Neural Networks

• Applications of neural networks
• The biology of animal neural networks
• Assumptions for neural networks
• How a neural network makes predictions
• Choosing the network architecture
• Recurrent neural networks
• Reinforcement learning for businesses

Module 7: Prescriptive Analytics I

• What is prescriptive analytics?
• Connecting predictive analytics to a business objective
• Deep dive into a business model
• Making a business decision
• Decision Trees
• SmartService Case

Module 8: Prescriptive Analytics II: Behavioural Economics Biases

• Risk aversion
• Sunk cost fallacy
• Diversification
• Decision making process and debiasing

Module 9: Ethics/Legal and Organisational Issues

• Implementation challenges
• Setting up the right infrastructure
• Big data strategy
• GDPR
• Privacy and Anonymization
• Hacking and insider threats
• Making customers comfortable

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 Business Analytics

CASE STUDIES

Hotel Industry
How does a hotel booking platform test whether advertising on its
website works?

Netflix
How Netflix used a competition to improve their search and
recommendation algorithms?

Art
How do you use neural networks to train computers to replicate the styles
of different artists?

London Time
How many fashion watches should LondonTime order before the selling
season begins?

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 Business Analytics

Cambridge Breakthrough Science (Biotech Company)

How do they decide which 2 of the 4 promising drugs can be developed
further?

UPS
How their ORION inititiative allowed UPS to save an estimated $300-$400
million and led to a reduction of 100 million miles driven?

Google Oxygen
How Google used data to see whether managers matter?

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 Business Analytics

ASSIGNMENTS

Carter Racing
How does a car racing team decide whether to participate in a race or not?

SmartService (Scientific Instruments Company)

How does SmartService use a decision tree to calculate their bid for a new
contract?

TalkTalk
What should TalkTalk have done differently after they were hacked? How
should they have protected their customers’ data?

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 Business Analytics

THE LEARNING EXPERIENCE

The Business Analytics programme is spread over 11 weeks and consists of Video Lectures, Live Webinars,
Assignments, Q&A Sessions and Discussions.

Orientation
The first week is orientation week. During this week you will be introduced to the
other participants in the class from across the world and you will learn how to use the
learning management system and other learning tools provided.

Goal Setting
In other weeks, you have learning goals set for the week, including watching the video
lectures and completing the assignments. All assignments have weekly deadlines.

Video Lectures
The recorded video lectures are conducted by programme faculty.

Live Webinars
During the programme, there are four live webinars conducted by Dr Oraiopoulos and
Dr Stillwell. Live webinars are usually conducted between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. UTC on
Tuesdays or Wednesdays.

Q&A Sessions
In addition to the live webinars, Cambridge Judge Business School Executive
Education faculty also conduct Q&A sessions every week or every alternate week to
help participants clarify any questions they may have about the content.

Follow-Up
A programme support team will follow-up through emails and via phone calls with
participants who are unable to submit their assignments on time.

Continuous Programme Access

You will continue to have access to the programme videos and learning material for
up to 12 months from the programme start date.

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 Business Analytics

CERTIFICATE

Upon successful completion of the programme, participants will be awarded a digital certificate of
completion by Cambridge Judge Business School Executive Education.

Please note that this programme can be incorporated into the completion of the Cambridge Judge Business
School Management Certificate of Achievement. It will be credited as an “in-person” 2-day programme for
the purpose of meeting the GMCA requirements. If you require more details on the GMCA and wish to
speak to our advisors please contact executive.education@jbs.cam.ac.uk.

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Your Name

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Business Analytics: Decision Making Using Data

Cambridge Judge Business School

Executive Education
University of Cambridge

Allison Wheeler Heau Jane Davies

Director of Open Programmes Director
Cambridge Judge Business School Cambridge Judge Business School
Executive Education Executive Education
University of Cambridge University of Cambridge

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 Business Analytics

PROGRAMME FEE AND DURATION

USD 2,000
3 Months, Online

Singapore residents who wish to enrol in this programme will be charged GST.

PREREQUISITES

This programme is designed for working professionals and requires proficiency

in English. All videos are recorded in English. All assignments are written in
?
English and are required to be responded to in English.

The programme requires you to have a device and 1 Mbps (or faster) Internet
connection. The device on which you access the programme should support
one of the following browsers: Chrome 71, Firefox 64, IE 11, Edge 42, Safari 11.

ABOUT EMERITUS

Cambridge Judge Business School Executive Education is collaborating with online education provider
Emeritus to offer a portfolio of high-impact online courses. These courses leverage Cambridge Judge
Business School’s thought leadership in technical practice developed over years of research, teaching,
and practice.

By collaborating with Emeritus, we are able to broaden access beyond our on-campus offerings in a
collaborative and engaging format that stays true to the quality of Cambridge Judge Business School
Executive Education.

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Schedule a call with a
Programme Advisor to
learn how this programme
can help you

SCHEDULE A CALL

Apply for the programme here

APPLY NOW

This programme is being delivered in

collaboration with Emeritus.

Prospective participants with

questions on the programme are
encouraged to contact Emeritus,
for further information.

Email: info@emeritus.org
Call: +44 122 858 5700

Cambridge Judge Business School

Executive Education
University of Cambridge
Trumpington Street
Cambridge CB2 1AG
United Kingdom

The organisers reserve the right to change

any details of the Programme without notice.
© JBS Executive Education Limited has
copyright of all original material contained in
this brochure (April 2019)