Essential MOOC Courses In Business

Statistics for Business I

School: Indian Institute of Management (Bangalore)

Platform: edX

Registration Link: Statistics for Business I

Start Date: July 7, 2015 (5 Weeks Long)

Workload: 5-7 Hours Per Week

Shankar Venkatagiri

Shankar Venkatagiri

Instructor: Shankar Venkatagiri

Credentials: Venkatagiri is an assistant professor of quantitative methods and information systems at the Indian Institute of Management (Bangalore). A holder of three master’s degrees and a Ph.D. in mathematics (Georgia Tech), Venkatagiri’s areas of interest include network analysis, cloud computing, software processes and technology mediated learning. Before entering academia, he worked in consulting in the energy, healthcare, and banking sectors.

Graded: Students can earn a verified certificate for $25 by completing all course requirements.

Description: According to Venkatagiri, data analysts may understand how to run sophisticated statistics software, but they don’t necessarily understand “what’s under the hood.” In this course, students will study “descriptive statistics,” learning how to apply data sets in simulations to solve problems using R software and Excel. In addition, they will learn the following:

  • “Clean[ing] up a dataset and summarize[ing the data using single point measures of centrality and dispersion
  • Classify[ing] variables by scale and aggregate[ing] them with pivot tables
  • Build[ing] an understanding of probability, joint and marginal probability, conditional probability
  • Apply[ing] Bayes Rule to invert probabilities on a decision tree”

Review: No reviews.

Additional Background: The second part of this course will start in October 2015. It consists of four parts overall.