Analytics Education

I am a business analytics evangelist, as some of my students say. I offer a course on Business Analytics for anyone interested in this new exciting field.

As a first step one must learn how to use statistical software. Three software products that I recommend are:

SAS, R and DASC. DASC is a software available free with the text book I had co-authored with Hengquin Tong and Yangxin Huang titled Developing Econometrics published by John Wiley and Sons in 2011.

One can learn the other two, SAS and R using the following web link: http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/

There has been an intense debate in economics on statistical analysis without a theory on the one hand, and the economic theories being advanced without much of an empirical validation on the other hand, and thus making economic theory increasingly mathematical and far removed from reality. This has resulted in the scientific profession questioning the so called economic science, and labelling it as a well-known euphemism "Dismal Science".

In this connection it is quite pertinent to note that while businesses are increasingly embracing big data analytics to guide them on strategic business policy the economic policy makers and official statistics are falling way behind.

There is a need to thoroughly revamp the official data collection and dissemination using big data concepts. One may be interested in seeing a recent study undertaken by United Nations Economic Commission for Europe on this issue. The following web link may be useful.

http://www1.unece.org/stat/platform/display/bigdata/2014+Project

Kris