asunghong / msin0093-syllabus

Syllabus for Business Strategy and Analytics in Masters of Business Analytics

Business Strategy and Analytics Syllabus

Instructor: Anil Doshi

• Office: Canary Wharf (Office SW6)
• Email: anil[dot]doshi[at]ucl[dot]ac[dot]uk
• Office hours: Wednesdays, 15:00 to 16:30, and by appointment.

Module Details

• Module ID: MSIN0093 (UCL Moodle)
• Offered: Fall 2019, Term 1. Canary Wharf, SE Theater. 8:30-11:30.
• TA:
  • Andrew Montandon (a[dot]montandon[at]ucl[dot]ac[dot]uk)
  • Office Hours (CW): Wednesdays 12:00-14:00; Thursdays 11:00-12:00 or by appointment

Policies

1. Attendance. Attendance is critical. If you have extenuating circumstances that are going to keep you out of class, please inform me in advanced as early as possible.

2. Class decorum. Treat our time in the classroom as you would meeting with the executive team or board of directors of your company. This means listening to and respecting the perspectives of your peers. It also means speaking up and engaging with the discussion.

3. Class participation. This module depends on the participation of all the students. Active engagement (i.e. actively discussing and listening to your classmates' points) promotes a more lively discussion and debate. It is in the exchange of ideas that new and interesting ways of thinking about the concepts in the module emerge.

With that in mind, speaking and presenting in class is an important part of the learning model. I understand that some people may find public speaking challenging for a variety of reasons. If this is the case, please see me.

4. Technology.

   • Phones. Mute/off and placed in bags or packs i.e. far away from your hands
   • Laptops.
     • During discussions/lectures: no laptops (if you have circumstances requiring an exception, please see me)
     • During lab sessions: OK
   • Tablets. Flat on desk with wifi off i.e. use like a notebook

5. Class Norms. I would like to make explicit some norms that I hope are embraced in the classroom.

   • Arrive to class on time and prepared to contribute
   • Take risks with your ideas
   • Speak in class if you have a question
   • Embrace failure and the iterative nature of learning and discovery
   • And finally, do not wait until you have the perfect comment to raise your hand and speak in class

6. Guests. Guests are welcome to attend class. Friends, colleagues who are interested in the program, and family are all invited. Please email me the name of your guest the day before class. At the start of class I will ask you to introduce the guest to your peers and I encourage the class to make our guests feel welcome. I request that you inform your guests to remain as observers during the class.

7. Food and Drink. In line with the UCL School of Management norms, please refrain from bringing food or drinks (water bottles are OK) into the class.

Assessment

Assessment is based on an individual assignment (60%) and a team project (40%). Details of the assignments are provided in Moodle. Deadlines are posted in the schedule.

Honor Code

By taking Business Strategy and Analytics at the UCL School of Management, you are agreeing to maintain a high level of professional integrity. For your work, this means citing sources wherever appropriate and producing work that is your own. Cheating, plagiarizing, or misrepresenting one's work are a violation of our classroom's aspirational norms and the university's code of conduct.

Datasets and Data Repositories

If you want to look for an existing dataset for various assignments, I have assembled an list of data sources you can use as an initial point for your search.

Recommended Books

Here is a selection of books to complement what you will see during the term.

1. Strategy and Economics

• Grant, R. M. (2016). Contemporary Strategy Analysis. UK: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
• Zenger, T. (2016). Beyond Competitive Advantage. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press.

2. Data Summarization, Graphing, and Visualization

• Berinato, S. (2016). Good Charts. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.
• Few, S. (2012). Show Me The Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten. Burlingame, CA: Analytics Press.

3. Statistics, Experiments, and Causal Analytics

• Angrist, J.D. and J. Pischke. (2014). Mastering 'Metrics: The Path from Cause to Effect. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Cunningham, S. (2018) Causal Inference: The Mixtape.
• Diez, D. M., C. D. Barr, and M. Cetinkaya-Rundel (2015). OpenIntro Statistics. OpenIntro.

Gertler, Paul J., Sebastian Martinez, Patrick Premand, Laura B. Rawlings, and Christel M. J. Vermeersch (2016). Impact Evaluation in Practice. World Bank Group.

• Glennerster, Rachel and K. Takavarasha (2013). Running Randomized Evaluations: A Practical Guide. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Pearl, J. (2018). The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect. New York: Basic Books.

Schedule

A summary of the schedule and assignment deadlines is posted below. Note all assignments are due at 10:00am.

Week	Date	Topic	Assignment
1	2 Oct	Module Introduction Problem Framing
2	9 Oct	Data Structure and Summarization	Team Ideas/Charter Milestone Optional Team Meetings (10 Oct)
3	16 Oct	Strategy Frameworks
4	23 Oct	Survey Design
5	30 Oct	Experiments	Team Draft Milestone Optional Team Meetings (31 Oct)
6	6 Nov	Causal Graphs
7	13 Nov	Causal Analysis I
8	20 Nov	Causal Analysis II
9	27 Nov	Data Ethics	Individual Assignment (due 29 Nov 10:00)
10	4 Dec	Team Presentations Module Wrap Up	Team Project - Slides and Writeup (Due 6 Dec 10:00)

Reading List

Please visit the UCL Reading List to see the readings for this module.