Indian Institute of Management, Udaipur

Post-Graduate Programme in Management

Year 2021-22
Course Outline for Predictive Analytics
Credits :4 Term : IV
Instructor : Professor Debanjan Mitra
Email : debanjan.mitra@iimu.ac.in

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Course Objectives:

This course aims to go beyond the classical statistical methods. Abundance in

computing power has led to advancement of highly computational,
machine/statistical learning methods. This course aims to give an applied overview
of advanced, non-linear Business Analytics methods such as Decision Trees,
Boosting, Bagging, as well as more classical linear approaches such as linear
regression, logistic regression, linear discriminant analysis, and k-nearest
neighbors.

The methods intimated above will be covered in the context of Marketing, Finance
and other important business decisions. At the end of this course the students
should have an understanding of when and how to apply these methods in real
business situations. Students should also be able describe the problem at hand to
data scientists in their respective teams and be able to understand/interpret the
results reported by analysts. We will mainly use R. Instruction on the use of R will
be provided. An interested student may explore and use any other software

Textbook:

1. “Data Mining for Business Analytics, An Indian Adaptation: Concepts,

Techniques, and Applications in R”. Shmueli, Bruce, Yahav, Patel, Lichtendal Jr.
Wiley.
References:
1. “Essentials of Business Analytics: An Introduction to the Methodology and its
Applications”. Editors: Bhimasankaran Pochiraju, and Sridhar Seshadri. Springer.

2. “An Introduction to Statistical Learning”. Gareth James, Daniella Witten, Trevor

Hastie, and Robert Tibshirani. Springer.

3. Other materials as may be referenced during the course.

Class coverage: Given below is a tentative schedule of topics which will be

introduced with practical applications.

Date Topics to be covered Reading

Session 1 Introduction to the course and discussions on Chapter 1:
syllabus, evaluation components, general Sections 1.1 -– 1.6
guidelines
Chapter 2:
Sections 2.1 -- 2.4,
Overview of Predictive Analytics 2.6
Introduction to modern statistical learning
approaches and examples of business
problems to be addressed.
Session 2 Understanding Data: Chapter 3:
Numerical summaries, and Data Sections 3.1 -- 3.4
visualization; Introduction to R
Session 3 Review of Multiple Linear Regression: Chapter 6:
Analysis; Model diagnostics techniques; Sections 6.1 -– 6.4
Variable selection
Sessions 4 Logistic Regression Chapter 10:
and 5 Model, applications, implementation in R Sections 10.1 -–
10.5
Session 6 k-Nearest Neighbor Algorithm Chapter 7:
k-nearest neighbor algorithm, applications, Sections 7.1 -– 7.3
implementation in R
Session 7 Linear Discriminant Analysis Chapter 12:
Model, applications, implementation in R Sections 12.1 -–
12.8
Sessions 8 Experimental Design: Randomized Supplemental
and 9 Controlled Trials; A/B Testing, Multivariable reading material
Testing
Session 10 General Case Studies
Midterm
Sessions 11 Classification Trees: Chapter 9:
and 12 Classification and Regression Tree Sections 9.1 -– 9.9
Algorithm, pruning, applications,
implementation in R
Session 13 Ensemble Methods:
Random Forests, Bagging, Boosting
Session 14 Unsupervised Learning: Market Basket Chapter 14:
Analysis Section 14.1
Association rules, applications,
implementation in R
Session 15 Introduction to Clustering Chapter 15:
and 16 Hierarchical and k-means clustering, Sections 15.1 -–
applications, implementation in R 15.5
Session 17 Forecasting through time series Chapter 16:
and 18 Sections 16.1 -–
16.5

Chapter 17:
Sections 17.1 -–
17.4
Sessions 19 Project Presentations
and 20

Evaluation: The following will be the evaluation scheme

Component Weightage
Midterm 30%
Project (Group) 40%
Final Exam 30%

The Final Project will be a group submission. Apart from submitting a report, each
group will make a presentation on their project. It is encouraged that each group
finds a rich problem on data analysis to work on as the project. If a group cannot
find an interesting project to work on, it will be provided by the instructor. It will
have a cost associated with it.

The Final Exam will be during the end-term examinations week. There will be no
makeup for the Final Exam.

Class participation and attendance: You will find it extremely beneficial to

complete the reading assigned at the very least by the end of the day of class. It is
assumed that you will attend all classes. You should inform the instructor
beforehand about missed classes. The rules for missed classes are detailed in the
student handbook provided by the PGP office.

Class preparation and conduct: It is presumed that you have access to a laptop
computer for carrying out the work. Generally, using laptop in class is not allowed,
unless instructed otherwise by the instructor, for some specific sessions. Use of
mobile phones in class is strictly not allowed. You should adhere to the code of
conduct documented by the students’ body. Plagiarism will be dealt with the
strictest of measures.