WORKSHOP TITLE

Data Description and Visualization Workshop

WORKSHOP INSTRUCTOR

Alessandro Recla
Academic Fellow
Decision Sciences Department, Bocconi University
alessandro.recla@unibocconi.it

Alessandro Recla is SDA Fellow of Knowledge Group Decision Sciences and Business Analytics at
SDA Bocconi School of Management. He teaches in SDA Bocconi Executive courses on Data
visualization and Dashboard design topics.

He is currently Academic Fellow in different universities: Bocconi University since 2006, member
of Decision Sciences Department, he teaches Statistics (undergraduate), Principles of Business
Analytics (graduate in management), Tourism Analytics (Master in Economia del Turismo);
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore since 2021, where he teaches Statistics (undergraduate in
Finance); Università dell’Insubria since 2014, where he teaches Applied Statistics (graduate) and
Statistica per l’Economia (undergraduate); Franklin University Switzerland since 2022, where he
teaches Quantitative Methods and Dynamic Forecasting (undergraduate).

He is one of the recipients of teaching awards undergraduate school 2018 and teaching awards
graduate school 2020 based on students’ evaluations in Bocconi University.

Alessandro studied Economics, Statistics and Social Sciences in Bocconi graduating in 2004. He
is married with two children.

He has more than 15 years of experience in consultancy on analytics topic, and recently founded
his own company, Analytics Arts, specialized in analytics and marketing research. His main
research and consulting interests are related to data analytics, modelling, marketing research
and quantitative methods applied to marketing topics for supporting corporate decisions and
processes.

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

The workshop is intended to provide a common starting level of understanding of mathematical

and statistical fundamentals in relation to decision-making processes, economic and financial
evaluations, preparing all the participants to further developments that will be covered within the
Program.

SDA Bocconi Asia Center

9th Floor, Hiranandani Knowledge Park I Powai, Mumbai - 400076, Maharashtra, India I tel. +91 22 4086 7000 I sdabocconiasiacenter.com
The workshop is designed to respond to the needs of a non-specialist audience, also for
participants with “non-scientific” degrees (humanities and other “soft” disciplines), who have not
been extensively exposed to quantitative methods and basic calculation procedures or, more
generally, for people not feeling “comfortable” with Math and Stats techniques.

The main feature of the Data Description and Visualization Workshop is its practical approach
(i.e., no theorem proofs, or formula memorization → the focus is on practical applications and
exercises). The course has a strong practical basis, with an extensive use of supported
simulations. It will alternate theoretical and practical sessions, and also work in small groups with
PC.

The workshop will give to participants an “operational command” of mathematical and statistical
concepts, techniques and calculation procedures, to be able to apply the correct tools, perform
the correct computations, analyse data and interpret results for business issues.
At the end of this Workshop, the participants are able to manage the most common data analysis
techniques: basic descriptive and data visualization to analyse qualitative and quantitative data.

WORKSHOP CONTENT:

The course is organized in two main parts:

1) Data Visualization
2) Summary measures

In the first part we will focus on data visualization tools to present data and analysis in an
effective way. We will learn how to classify the data and how to use it to create the correct
graph. In other words, we will learn how to transform data into useful information using graphs.

In the second part, we will talk about summary measures: central and non-central tendency
indexes, variability and connection indexes. Then, the focus will be on data analysis, providing
a set of practical application of statistical techniques essentials to the decision making process.

Finally, a practical group work will be assigned.

MATERIALS:

For long / extensive calculations PC software (general purpose, e.g. Excel) will be used. We will
use also a data visualization software (Tableau).
Learning material will be provided during the course.
Course readings:
-Slides provided by the instructor (uploaded in the elearning platform BlackBoard)
-Excel and Tableau files for learning support

Further readings
• P. Newbold, W.L. Carlson, B.M. Thorne – Statistics for Business and Economics

SDA Bocconi Asia Center

9th Floor, Hiranandani Knowledge Park I Powai, Mumbai - 400076, Maharashtra, India I tel. +91 22 4086 7000 I sdabocconiasiacenter.com
Session 1
(3 hours)
Introduction to the workshop: presentation
Descriptive Statistics – Basic Concepts, Variable classifications
Topics:
Warm up and introduction
Why statistics? Decision making under uncertainty
Steps in a statistical analysis: goals, overview of sources, data collection, analysis and presentation
Basic notions of descriptive statistics
Population and sample. Descriptive and inferential statistics
Types of variables and levels of measurement (qualitative and quantitative data)

Session 2 Descriptive Statistics – Data visualization and charts

(3 hours) Topics:
Frequency distribution and graphs to describe categorical variables (bar chart, pie chart)
Frequency distribution and graphs to describe discrete numerical variables (stick chart)
Line chart to describe time series data
Frequency distribution and graphs to describe continuous numerical variables: histogram
Frequency density
Cumulative frequencies and their graphical representation
Relationships between variables: scatterplot and two-entry table
Conditional distributions and statistical independence
Stacked-bar chart (and side-by-side bar chart)

Session 3 Practical session with Excel

(3 hours)

Session 4 Descriptive Statistics – Summary Measures

(3 hours) Topics:
Summarizing the information contained in a series of numbers
Central tendency indexes
Non-central tendency indexes
Variability and connection indexes
Reporting and Data understanding

Session 5
(3 hours)
Working with possible relationships and forecasting
Topics:
Measures of relationships between variables: covariance and linear correlation coefficient Analysis
of variance
OLS regression
Independence
Simple Linear Regression Model and business applications

Session 6
(3 hours)
Practical session

SDA Bocconi Asia Center

9th Floor, Hiranandani Knowledge Park I Powai, Mumbai - 400076, Maharashtra, India I tel. +91 22 4086 7000 I sdabocconiasiacenter.com