Essentials of Business Analytics

Dr. David R. Anderson is a leading author and Professor Emeritus of Quantitative Analysis in the College of Business Administration at the University of Cincinnati. He has served as head of the Department of Quantitative Analysis and Operations Management and as Associate Dean of the College of Business Administration. He was also coordinator of the college’s first Executive Program. In addition to introductory statistics for business students, Dr. Anderson has taught graduate-level courses in regression analysis, multivariate analysis, and management science. He also has taught statistical courses at the Department of Labor in Washington, D.C. Dr. Anderson has received numerous honors for excellence in teaching and service to student organizations. He is the co-author of ten well-respected textbooks related to decision sciences and actively consults with businesses in the areas of sampling and statistical methods. Born in Grand Forks, North Dakota, he earned his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from Purdue University. Michael J. Fry. Michael J. Fry is Professor of Operations, Business Analytics, and Information Systems (OBAIS) and Academic Director of the Center for Business Analytics in the Carl H. Lindner College of Business at the University of Cincinnati. Born in Killeen, Texas, he earned a B.S. from Texas A&M University, and M.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan. He has been at the University of Cincinnati since 2002, where he served as Department Head from 2014 to 2018, and has been named a Lindner Research Fellow. He has also been a visiting professor at Cornell University and at the University of British Columbia. Professor Fry has published more than 25 research papers in journals such as Operations Research, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Transportation Science, Naval Research Logistics, IIE Transactions, Critical Care Medicine, and INFORMS Journal of Applied Analytics. He serves on editorial boards for journals such as Production and Operations Management, INFORMS Journal of Applied Analytics (formerly Interfaces), and Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports. His research interests are in applying analytics to the areas of supply chain management, sports, and public-policy operations. He has worked with many different organizations for his research, including Dell, Inc., Starbucks Coffee Company, Great American Insurance Group, the Cincinnati Fire Department, the State of Ohio Election Commission, the Cincinnati Bengals, and the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Gardens. In 2008, he was named a finalist for the Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research Practice, and he has been recognized for both his research and teaching excellence at the University of Cincinnati. In 2019, he led the team that was awarded the INFORMS UPS George D. Smith Prize on behalf of the OBAIS Department at the University of Cincinnati. Jeffrey W. Ohlmann. Jeffrey W. Ohlmann is Associate Professor of Business Analytics and Huneke Research Fellow in the Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa. Born in Valentine, Nebraska, he earned a B.S. from the University of Nebraska, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan. He has been at the University of Iowa since 2003. Professor Ohlmann's research on the modeling and solution of decision-making problems has produced more than two dozen research papers in journals such as Operations Research, Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS Journal on Computing, Transportation Science, and the European Journal of Operational Research. He has collaborated with organizations such as Transfreight, LeanCor, Cargill, the Hamilton County Board of Elections, and three National Football League franchises. Because of the relevance of his work to industry, he was bestowed the George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award, and was recognized as a finalist for the Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research Practice. Jeffrey D. Camm. Jeffrey D. Camm is the Inmar Presidential Chair and Associate Dean of Business Analytics in the School of Business at Wake Forest University. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, he holds a B.S. from Xavier University (Ohio) and a Ph.D. from Clemson University. Prior to joining the faculty at Wake Forest, he was on the faculty of the University of Cincinnati. He has also been a visiting scholar at Stanford University, and a visiting professor of business administration at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Dr. Camm has published over 45 papers in the general area of optimization applied to problems in operations management and marketing. He has published his research in Science, Management Science, Operations Research, the INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics, and other professional journals. Dr. Camm was named the Dornoff Fellow of Teaching Excellence at the University of Cincinnati, and he was the 2006 recipient of the INFORMS Prize for the Teaching of Operations Research Practice. A firm believer in practicing what he preaches, he has served as an operations research consultant to numerous companies and government agencies. From 2005 to 2010 he served as editor-in-chief of the INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics (formerly Interfaces). In 2016, Professor Camm received the George E. Kimball Medal for service to the operations research profession, and in 2017 he was named an INFORMS Fellow. James J. Cochran. James J. Cochran is Associate Dean for Research, Professor of Applied Statistics and the Rogers-Spivey Faculty Fellow at The University of Alabama. Born in Dayton, Ohio, he earned his B.S., M.S., and M.B.A. from Wright State University and his Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. He has been at The University of Alabama since 2014 and has been a visiting scholar at Stanford University, Universidad de Talca, the University of South Africa, and Pole Universitaire Leonard de Vinci. Dr. Cochran has published more than 50 papers in the development and application of operations research and statistical methods. He has published in several journals, including Management Science, The American Statistician, Communications in Statistics -- Theory and Methods, Annals of Operations Research, European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics, and Statistics and Probability Letters. He received the 2008 INFORMS Prize for the Teaching of Operations Research Practice, 2010 Mu Sigma Rho Statistical Education Award, and 2016 Waller Distinguished Teaching Career Award from the American Statistical Association. Dr. Cochran was elected to the International Statistics Institute in 2005, named a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2011, and named a Fellow of INFORMS in 2017. He also received the Founders Award in 2014 and the Karl E. Peace Award in 2015 from the American Statistical Association, and he received the INFORMS President's Award in 2019. A strong advocate for effective operations research and statistics education as a means of improving the quality of applications to real problems, Dr. Cochran has chaired teaching effectiveness workshops around the globe. He has served as an operations research consultant to numerous companies and not-for-profit organizations. Dennis J. Sweeney is Professor Emeritus of Quantitative Analysis and founder of the Center for Productivity Improvement at the University of Cincinnati. Born in Des Moines, Iowa, he earned a BSBA degree from Drake University and his MBA and DBA degrees from Indiana University, where he was an NDEA Fellow. Professor Sweeney has worked in the management science group at Procter & Gamble and has been a visiting professor at Duke University. Professor Sweeney served as Head of the Department of Quantitative Analysis and four years as Associate Dean of the College of Business Administration at the University of Cincinnati. Professor Sweeney has published more than 30 articles and monographs in the area of management science and statistics. The National Science Foundation, IBM, Procter & Gamble, Federated Department Stores, Kroger and Cincinnati Gas & Electric have funded his research, which has been published in Management Science, Operations Research, Mathematical Programming, Decision Sciences and other journals. Professor Sweeney has co-authored ten textbooks in the areas of statistics, management science, linear programming and production and operations management. N/A

1. Introduction
2. Descriptive Statistics.
3. Data Visualization.
4. Descriptive Data Mining.
5. Probability: An Introduction to Modeling Uncertainty.
6. Statistical Inference.
7. Linear Regression.
8. Time Series Analysis and Forecasting.
9. Predictive Data Mining.
10. Spreadsheet Models.
11. Linear Optimization Models.
12. Integer Linear Optimization Models.
13. Nonlinear Optimization Models.
14. Monte Carlo Simulation.
15. Decision Analysis.
Appendix A: Basics of Excel.
Appendix B: Database Basics with Microsoft Access.
Appendix C: Solutions to Even-Numbered Questions (online).