Richard Vidgen - Business Analytics: A Management Approach

Cover illustration: 9781352007268

First published 2019 by

RED GLOBE PRESS

Red Globe Press in the UK is an imprint of Springer Nature Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW.

Red Globe Press is a registered trademark in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.

ISBN 978-1-352-00725-1 hardback

ISBN 978-1-352-00726-8 ebook

The content of this book has been developed through teaching MBA, undergraduate, and postgraduate courses on business analytics over several years. While the book is targeted at an MBA and business audience we go reasonably deeply into data collection and exploration, predictive modelling techniques, and data communication. This helps managers gain insight into what data scientists actually do, to understand the impact on the organization of analytics, and to focus on how value can be created. While we do not expect managers to become data scientists (although some do) we aim to equip them with some basic skills in predictive modelling. Indeed, the introduction of automated machine learning (AML) with DataRobot takes this to a new level since one benefit of AML is that advanced data science techniques become accessible to citizens and managers.

A further aim is to have all the software available via a web browser, hence the choice of SAS Visual Analytics and DataRobot. This facilitates distance-taught courses and avoids the installation and hosting issues associated with software in universities and organizations more generally. We also cover the programming language R, which, while being installed locally, is open source and free to use, for those with some familiarity with programming (or a willingness to learn).

SAS Visual Analytics can be accessed free of charge via Teradata University Network (TUN) by students and is therefore freely accessible for teaching. Students can gain access to DataRobot, subject to their institution joining the DataRobot faculty programme.

There is a companion website for the book ( http://macmillanihe.com/vidgenbusiness-analytics ) that contains resources for students and instructors. In particular, the site contains the datasets used in the book and further resources, such as the accompanying R code. We intend to grow the online resources for this book and welcome feedback in the form of contributions, suggestions for improvements, and, of course, corrections.

We thank SAS for giving us permission to include screenshots of their Visual Analytics product; IBM for permission to include screenshots of Watson Analytics; DataRobot for giving us permission to reproduce screenshots of their DataRobot software, and to include selected extracts from their documentation; and NodeXL and Polinode for permission to include screenshots of their social network analysis packages.