Data Analytics for Financial Decisions module (BU21001)
Learn the data analytics used by management to aid financial decision-making.
Issues around logistics, supply chain management, and production scheduling are key to the success of many businesses. Decisions about these issues involving data analytics techniques are critical to the day-to-day running of a business.
In this module, students will study a range of data analytics techniques that are commonly used by management in decision-making within organisations. Students will identify important aspects of a problem, incorporate them into their analysis and obtain a solution to the problem, often using `real life' applications.
What you will learn
In this module, you will study how several quantitative techniques can be used by management to aid decision-making:
- Linear programming
- Critical path analysis
- Transportation and assignment algorithms
- Stock control models
- Queueing theory and simulation techniques
- Decision theory
- Forecasting
By the end of this module, you will be able to:
- understand how data can be analysed within a business to optimise operations and performance
- apply a range of data analytic techniques to solve business problems
- show how spreadsheets can be used to aid decision-making
Assignments / assessment
The module will be assessed as follows:
Assessed lab (20%)
- Drawing on weekly lab material using Excel
- Due in Week 11
Final Exam (80)%
- The exam will be 2 hours
- Held in the December exam diet
Teaching methods / timetable
You will learn through a mixture of lectures, labs and tutorials. Learning material is provided through lecture slides, lab examples and tutorial questions. Additional videos are available to supplement lecture materials.
| Week | Topic Covered |
| 1 | Linear Programming: Formulate and solve a scarce resource problem |
| 2 | Conduct sensitivity analysis on the objective function and perform linear programming for integer problems |
| 3 | Project scheduling: Networks, Critical Path Method, Programme Evaluation & Review Technique, Types of Float, Gantt Charts and resource levelling |
| 4 | Network Models: Transportation problems involving cost minimisation |
| 5 | Advanced aspects of Transportation and Assignment problems |
| 6 | Reading Week |
| 7 | Inventory Models: identifying, explaining and calculating the costs of holding inventory |
| 8 | Queues: single server and multi-server models as well as simulation of queues using random numbers |
| 9 | Decisions under uncertainty and different attitudes to risk |
| 10 | Using a decision tree to solve a multi-stage decision problem |
| 11 | Forecasting |
Courses
This module is available on the following courses: