Best Free MOOCs in Business In March

Modeling Risk and Realities

School: Wharton School

Platform: Coursera

Registration Link: REGISTER HERE

Start Date: March 6, 2017

Workload: Not Specified

Instructors: Sergei Savin and Senthil Veeraraghavan

Credentials: Veeraraghaven and Savin are associate professors of operations, information, and decisions at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Veeraraghaven, who earned the Wharton Excellence in Teaching Awards in 2013 and 2014, teaches operations strategy course to MBAs and holds a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon. Savin teaches the core Business Analytics to MBAs who also took home a Wharton Excellence in Teaching Award in 2010. His research has been published by academic journals like Management Science and Operations Management. Gans is the Anheuser Busch Professor of Management Science at Wharton, where he teaches courses on business analytics and service operations to MBAs.

Graded: Students can choose to explore course videos, discussions, and ungraded assignments for free, but they won’t be able to submit graded assignments, earn a certificate, or complete a specialization without paying a $119 fee.

Description: ‘Garbage in, garbage out.’ That’s the mantra for anyone who builds a financial model. Making sense of the long-term isn’t easy. There are so many variables and unknowns that create ambiguity and risk. As a result, it is crucial for analysts to set precise outcomes and hash out the right parameters, developing a model that’s flexible enough to accommodate change and transparent enough to be readily understood.

In this course, students will “learn the methods for creating predictive models for identifying optimal choices; and how those choices change in response to changes in the model’s assumptions. [They’ll] also learn the basics of the measurement and management of risk. By the end of this course, [they’ll] be able to build their own models with their own data, so that they can begin making data-informed decisions.”

Review: “Good practical examples of the concepts. In general, seems to me that the courses of the specializations do not fit together well. At times, basic things mentioned elsewhere are repeated, some others are not explained sufficiently.” For additional reviews, click here.

Additional Background: This course is the first part of an “Investment Management” specialization, a five course series that covers portfolio and risk management, long-term investing, and understanding financial markets. To learn more about these courses and register for them, click here.