Imperial Business Analytics:

From Data to Decisions

Overview
Imperial Business Analytics: From Data to
Decisions is an online programme brought to
you by Executive Education at Imperial College
Business School. This immersive and interactive
programme will help you learn about the
fundamentals of the programming language -
Python, to help you expand your understanding
of business analytics. It will teach you how to use
descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics
to identify, analyse and solve critical business
problems.
Understand and explore fundamental methods,
frameworks and techniques of business
analytics to make sense of your data and use it to
make informed business decisions.
You will draw on expertise from Imperial College
Business School faculty, industry experts, case
studies and your peers. You will also explore the
practical applications of the analytical
frameworks you are learning.
1 Imperial Business Analytics: From Data to Decisions
The four-month programme combines live online
teaching sessions and video lectures with
interactive activities and assignments to enable
high-impact learning.
You will receive personal support throughout the
programme from a dedicated Learning Team and
finish the programme prepared to implement
what you’ve learnt. On completion you will
receive a verified Digital Certificate from Imperial
College Business School Executive Education.
430%
The Global Datasphere will reach
175 zettabytes in 2025, a 430%
increase from 2018
Source: IDC Data Age 2025, 2018
Who is this programme for?

This international programme is designed for

experienced professionals, including:

Mid-to-senior functional managers looking to

31%
Only 31% of companies say they
improve their decision making using data. are data driven
Source: NewVantage, Big Data and AI Executive
Technical managers implementing analytics Survey 2019
in their function or organization.

Professionals seeking to enter into the field

of analytics & data science.
Consultants aiming to develop their
knowledge of business analytics.
2X
Companies with good data analytics capabilities
are twice as likely to be in the top quartile of
performance within their industries
Source: PwC, Creating Value from Data 2019

The programme’s content and lessons are

applicable across industries, including:
advertising, banking and financial services,
consulting, education, FMCG, healthcare, IT,
retail and telecommunications.

No coding experience is required and you will

take two primer modules that will give you an
overview of mathematics, statistics and Python.

2 Imperial Business Analytics: From Data to Decisions

The Imperial advantage

1
Reuters ‘Most
Innovative
2MSc Strategic Marketing
QS World University
10
Times Higher Education
Rankings - 2020
14
Nobel Prize
winners
Universities - 2019’ Rankings - 2020 World
UK World

As part of Imperial College London, a global
leader in science and technology, Imperial
College Business School drives global business
and social transformation through the fusion of
business, technology and an entrepreneurial
mindset.
We combine innovative thinking and insight with
new technology to develop solutions to real world
issues, benefiting business and improving
society.
Our thought leadership is sought by governments,
policy-makers and global business leaders, who
often partner with us on research projects. We
consistently rank among the top business schools
in Europe and worldwide. We attract brilliant
minds and provide the environment to foster
innovative and entrepreneurial thinking, resulting
in ground-breaking ideas that unlock business
opportunities.

Our world-leading researchers pioneer practical

solutions and their research excellence and
long-established capabilities inform our Executive
Education programmes. We create and deliver
remarkable learning experiences with a lasting
positive impact.
3 Imperial Business Analytics: From Data to Decisions
Award-winning online learning

Imperial College Business School has its own

award-winning centre of educational technology.
The Edtech Lab is a team of specialists in online
learning design and pedagogy.

We have developed our own learning platform.

This leverages our expertise and cutting-edge
innovation in online teaching to create an
interactive, varied, personalised and supportive
learning experience.

How we deliver our programmes

Our programmes are The Learning Team are Our bespoke learning Our transformational
crafted via rigorous constantly available to framework consistently learning experience is
planning and assist and support encourages group a result of engaging,
interrogation by our participants learning through stimulating and diverse
academics and throughout the community learning media which
pedagogy experts. learning experience. engagement and high fosters real time
touch social feedback and
interactions. interaction.

The participant experience

The Digital Certificates
earned through our
online programmes are
exactly equal to the
hard work and
dedication it takes to
earn the campus
equivalent.
Our participants never Whilst structured, the Our learning design is
feel alone in their learning experience is multi-dimensional and
learning experience. flexible enough for highly interactive.
The platform is built partcipants to fit their There is a continuous
around a deeply studies around their focus on pedagogical
interactive peer busy lives. variety and live content.
connected
environment.

4 Imperial Business Analytics: From Data to Decisions

 Human
We create people-centric learning experiences.
From conception through to delivery, we are
guided by the principle that learning is a creative,
personal and, above all, human process. Our high
quality, crafted learning environments are highly
interactive, community-orientated and actively
tutored. Our programmes offer an engaging
experience designed to facilitate natural learning
behaviours.

Real
No compromise. Our online programmes offer the
absolute equivalent of our campus-based
programmes. They adopt the same rigorous
academic standards, are delivered via our
world-leading faculty and offer a comparable
high-touch approach to the classroom experience.

2
in online MBA ranking
Gold
award for Virtual Reality/
QS Online MBA Augmented Reality at the
Rankings, 2020 2019 QS Reimagine
World Education Conference

2
fully online degree
Silver
award for Business Education
programmes at Imperial at the 2018 QS Reimagine
College Business School Education Conference

180
online programmes
Bronze
award for Best Distributed/
from Imperial College Online Program for Nurturing
Business School 21st Century skills at the 2019
QS Reimagine Education
Conference

5 Imperial Business Analytics: From Data to Decisions

The Imperial impact
We have a culture of working across disciplines to bring a diverse and multifaceted point of view to
business challenges. Through our Institutes and Research Centres we transcend boundaries, uniting
world leading experts from a variety of research areas. We also engage with international organisations,
SMEs and policy-makers around the world, address key challenges for modern business and create
practical solutions with significant real-world impact.

Examples of our Institutes and Research Centres:

The Dyson School of Design Engineering
Opened in 2014 to fuse together design thinking,
engineering knowledge and practice, to foster a
culture of innovation and enterprise, and to help
solve global problems with emphasis on
sustainability, entrepreneurship and societal
impact.
The Data Science Institute (DSI)
The cross-faculty DSI acts as a focal point for
coordinating data science research at Imperial
College London by engaging with global partners,
stimulating collaboration across a broad spectrum
of disciplines, translating research into social and
economic impact as well as offering an advanced
education programme to train a new generation of
data scientists.
Centre for Global Finance and Technology
Imperial College Business School’s hub for the
interdisciplinary research needed to innovate,
reveal insights and answer questions; bringing
together the activities of academics, start-ups,
established industry and governmental
organisations to understand of the impact of
technology on finance, business and society.
Institute of Global Health Innovation
Co-creating and diffusing healthcare innovations
to tackle some of the most pressing global
challenges facing people today. The Institute is a
powerful engine which collaborates with a rich
network of internal and external partners from
academia, industry, government and the charitable
sector.

The Brevan Howard Centre for Financial Analysis
The Centre serves as a bridge between Imperial
College Business School, disciplines including
engineering and computational finance and the
world of business, to develop a greater
understanding and more efficient management of
risk, and to promote investment and productivity.
The Energy Futures Lab
Founded in 2005 to develop multidisciplinary
collaborations that tackle the broad range of
energy challenges that the world faces. The
Energy Futures Lab enhances impact in the
themes of Policy and Innovation, Energy
Infrastructure, Sustainable Power, Low Carbon
Cities and Transport and Clean Fossil Fuels.

6 Imperial Business Analytics: From Data to Decisions

Programme highlights
This programme enables you to apply state-of-the-art analytics techniques with rigor, confidence, and a
clear understanding of the underlying assumptions. You will also learn about current trends in business
analytics.

Drawing upon decades of research and teaching experience in this field, Dr Alex Ribeiro-Castro and
Professor Wolfram Wiesemann guide you through the fields of descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive
analytics, with an emphasis on real-life applicability and frequent reference to business problems from a
range of different sectors.

Key takeaways for this programme include:

Recognise Recommend
patterns in data using solutions for real-world
clustering techniques business problems using
analytical techniques

Understand Identify
your data using problems which can be
descriptive analytics solved using data

Draw Detect
insights and make and identify correlation
predictions from data, between features of a
using predictive machine dataset using classification
learning techniques and regression trees

Assess Evaluate
the feasibility and practical the power and limitations
implications of quantitative of analytics in decision
decisions, as well as their making
strengths and weaknesses

Differentiate Suggest
between optimal and problems and data sets that
sub-optimal solutions for are optimally solved by
real-world business problems support vector machines

7 Imperial Business Analytics: From Data to Decisions

Programme faculty
Dr Alex Ribeiro-Castro
Data Scientist and Senior
Teaching Fellow
Imperial College Business
School
Alex Ribeiro-Castro is a Data Scientist and
Senior Teaching Fellow at Imperial College
Business School, where he teaches on the
Global Business Analytics MSc.
Dr Ribeiro-Castro holds a MA and PhD in
Mathematics from the University of California
(Santa Cruz), and held a professorship in
Mathematics from the Pontifical Catholic
University (PUC-Rio) in Rio de Janeiro. He was
previously a Visiting Lecturer in the Applied
Mathematics Department at Imperial College
London and has accumulated over 10 years of
teaching experience across the globe, in diverse
subjects in pure and applied mathematics. He
has previously taught at the University of
California in Santa Cruz (USA), the University of
Toronto (Canada), and the Institute of Applied
and Pure Mathematics (Brazil).
With over five years of consultancy experience,
Dr Ribeiro-Castro has made contributions in
various industries, including machine learning
and optimisation problems in FinTech, health,
energy, and more recently in retail. Some of his
most recent industry partners include KPMG,
Quantum Black/McKinsey, Ion Trading (finance),
Ovo Energy/Kaluza (energy), DoctorLink (health)
and more recently Otravo BV (retail). He is
currently working as a technical adviser for a
pioneering data science project in maritime
insurance.
8 Imperial Business Analytics: From Data to Decisions
Prof Wolfram Wiesemann
Professor of Analytics and
Operations
Imperial College Business
School
Wolfram Wiesemann is Professor of Analytics
and Operations at Imperial College Business
School, London, where he also serves as the
Academic Director of the MSc Business
Analytics programme as well as a Fellow of the
KPMG Centre for Advanced Business Analytics.
Before joining the faculty of Imperial College
Business School in 2013, he was a post-doctoral
researcher at Imperial College London
(2010-2011) and an Imperial College Research
Fellow (2011-2012). He was a visiting researcher
at the Institute of Statistics and Mathematics at
Vienna University of Economics and Business,
Austria, in 2010, the Computer-Aided Systems
Laboratory at Princeton University, USA, in 2011,
and the Industrial Engineering and Operations
Research Department at Columbia University,
USA, in 2012.
Wolfram’s research interests revolve around the
methodological aspects of decision-making under
uncertainty and machine learning, as well as
applications in operations management, energy
and finance.
What you will learn

Throughout this four-month programme, you will discover the fundamental methods and frameworks to
help you make sense of your data and use it to make informed business decisions.

No coding experience is required and you will take two primer modules that will give you an overview of
mathematics, statistics and Python and help you in understanding the technical aspects of the
programme.

Module 1: Maths & Statistics Primer (2 weeks)

Introduction to probability theory
Basics of probability & statistics
Probability models
Bayes’ rule and conditional probability
Total probability
Bayes’ rule application
Probability distribution
Binomial distribution
Central limit theorem
Manipulating normal variables

Module 2: Python Primer (3 weeks)

Operating systems overview
Variables in python
Creating and managing lists
Numerical lists
Tuples
Dictionaries in python
Boolean variables
Conditional variables
About functions
Python demonstration and code manipulation

Module 3: Descriptive Analytics (3 weeks)

What is data?
Data and decision making
Estimate statistics of a data set
Maximum likelihood estimation
Detection and quantification of correlation
Outliers
Linear regression
Real-life applications

9 Imperial Business Analytics: From Data to Decisions

What you will learn

Module 4: Predictive Analytics (4 weeks)

Introduction to machine learning

Machine learning process
Supervised learning
Forecasting vs inference
Using nearest neighbours for classification problems
Predict outcomes in a business context using regression trees
Classify data using support vector machines
Measure similarity of data clusters
Predict outcomes for different clusters
Machine learning in the real world

Module 5: Prescriptive Analytics (4 weeks)

Foundations of linear programming

Optimisation problems
Production planning problem
Capital budgeting problem
Identifying the constraints
The optimal solution
Solving the problem in Excel
Model business problems as linear programmes
Integer programming
Optimisation models
Tricks-of-the-trade for business decisions
Real-life applications

10 Imperial Business Analytics: From Data to Decisions

Case studies
The case studies and industry examples featured throughout the programme provide a wide-ranging
look at how companies, organisations, and governments are applying analytics techniques to solve
business problems.

Netflix Union Airways

Using nearest neighbour Using discrete optimisation
methods in recommendation models for employee
engines for TV shows and scheduling.
movies.

New Bedford Steel Pandora

Company Using nearest neighbour
Using optimisation models methods in recommendation
to lower transportation costs engines for music.
in coal acquisition.

Security Industry Kearns & Associates

Using nearest neighbour Using discrete optimisation
methods to improve facial models in construction.
recognition in the security
industry.

American Red Cross Memorial Sloan-Kettering

Optimising blood processing Cancer Center
to decrease cost per Using optimisation models to
donation. improve treatment of
prostate cancer.

11 Imperial Business Analytics: From Data to Decisions

Case studies

Hewlett Packard The Netherlands

Using an optimisation-based Using optimisation
solution to improve the techniques to develop new
variety of product offerings. flood protection standards.

Facebook Microsoft
Open-sourcing Torchnet to Using and sharing a deep
accelerate AI research. learning toolkit to increase
advances in AI.

12 Imperial Business Analytics: From Data to Decisions

A remarkable learning experience

The programme is spread over four months and

includes live webinars, video lectures, case
studies, discussions and assignments.

Orientation Goal setting

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

The recorded video lectures are conducted by Throughout the programme, there are live
programme faculty. These dynamic lectures are webinars conducted by programme faculty.
designed to be high impact and reinforce Webinars are usually conducted between 1 pm
learning. and 3 pm UTC on Tuesdays or Wednesdays.

Interactive activities Follow-up

Activities like discussions and polls make the A Learning Team will provide ongoing
programme highly interactive and allow you to personalised support and check on your progress
share your perspectives with participants from throughout the programme, including if you are
around the world. unable to submit 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.

13 Imperial Business Analytics: From Data to Decisions

 Upon completion of the programme,
participants will be awarded a verified
Digital Certificate of Participation by
Imperial College Business School
Executive Education.
Imperial College Business School is collaborating
with online education provider Emeritus to offer
online programmes. This allows us to broaden
access in a collaborative and innovative format
that stays true to our distinctive methods of
learning, content and outstanding quality.

Programme details

4 months, online USD 2,200 (GBP 1,790)

including live webinars, discussions and activities Flexible payment options available. The flexible payment
option allows a participant to pay the programme fee in
instalments. This option is made available in the
application form and should be selected before making
the payment.
4 - 6 hours
per week

17 November 2020

14 Imperial Business Analytics: From Data to Decisions

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

Prospective participants with questions about

the programme are encouraged to contact
Emeritus for further information.

E: info@emeritus.org
C: +44 20 33899722

Imperial College Business School

South Kensington Campus
London SW7 2AZ
United Kingdom

W: imperial.ac.uk/business-school/executive-education

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