This course is very rich and to permit à the different people to learn a decision making from business analytics

I liked the way professor organized the course. Concept and example were clearly illustrated.

good

The course is very good, it could be better if the tools used in the analysis were updated to Python or R. The use of excel and the limitations of the linked analysis tool affect the continuity of studies after completing the course.

Overall enjoyable, but there were two main issues with the course. The first is that it is heavily dependent on the ASP software/plug-in. While you can access a free trial, it limits the simulation runs you can perform, and it also doesn't help once that trial is over. I think the course could be improved by examining how to work with some techniques in standard Excel. Much of what the ASP does is behind the scenes and the course videos focus more on setting it up than on what it is doing/how it works. That last point leads into my second disappointment with the course -- it just felt a bit short/rushed. The lessons after cluster analysis seem to delve less deeply into the material. I'm not sure if that is just due to complexity of the work underlying methodologies covered, but it does make me wonder what we're meant to walk away with as students. The first course in the specialization from Boulder seemed to have much more material and yet, was not dealing with as complex or hands-on items as this one. It felt as if the meat of this course should've been more than that of the first course.

I thought the material covered in the course was interesting and useful. However I must dock points because of issues with the Analytic Solver Platform as follows:

1) The trial version we used for the course had a limit on Trials in simulations. This limit made it impossible to achieve the same results as the professor in his examples and on assignments/quizzes. Many times in the quizzes, I had to simply guess an answer because it was impossible to recreate the simulation.

2) The trial was only for a limited time, and it expired before I finished the Week 4 course work.

The course is quite informative but very much rely on the proposed ASP product (both theoretical and practical stuff. The trial version of ASP doesn't work properly all the times. For instance, the number of trials for a simulation recommended by the professor (and emphasised continuously) is 10,000, at the same time ASP trial version limit is 1,000. Now I need to try all the practical tasks with any other alternative analytics tools which mean additional time (and might be more money) which I invested already.

Requires use of proprietary software that comes with a limited free trial that is difficult to install and couldn't even solve one of the problems in the quiz due to restrictions in the free trial capabilities. Did not declare this upfront. Course material is ok and insightful, but relies too much on the software rather than basic principles/concepts for optimization and heuristics.

I was bummed that most of the course required ASP. It's tough to get new software on my work computer. I would've loved the course if there was a way to use some of the key ASP features in the course in the same way that the "Introduction to Data Analytics for Business" allowed learners to write SQL queries within the course and test results using actual data.

The course was too reliant on the paid "analytic solver platform" to be relevant to me at work, since we are not allowed to install this software. it would have been more relevant if the built in and analysis toolpack in excel were used, but I realize this would've required more in-depth knowledge of excel.

The course requires paid applications that makes it inaccessible at times.

Read before taking the course. Explanations, cases and data for the course are great. The main problem is the analytical solver platform (ASP). The course counts on you using ASP and gives you instructions on how to access it, the problem is the conditions mentioned (free access for a semester) are either a lie on the part of the providers of the ASP from the start or conditions have changed since the courses inception. What ends up happening is this specialization covering 5 courses, and thus, approximately 5 months cannot be completed in the 15 days the free trial for the app gives you, after which it asks you to pay up a not small sum, even if youre purchasing the student license. New account creation has been down for weeks on the ASP site, so you cant even access it by creating multiple accounts with different emails, and on top of that the program itself just wont work like intended for some of its functions. I tried using excel 2013, excel 2019, excel 365 online and it just wont work, so I just couldent complete many activities that required something more than the default solver add in excel has already installed. I really wanted to finish this specialization, but after 3 month invested on it I just cant cause Ill not be able to do the capstone course if I cant access the tools I need to work on the assignments.

I wish the course could have stated clearly that from the start that learners have to pay for an analytical solver platform. It affected learners learning speed and motivation to continue the course. Also, could have had a little more explanation on a certain formula in a particular cell instead of just showing the formulas in the spreadsheet and just press "run" to run the simulation model.

The use of a trial of a private software as XLMiner does not allow to run the number o simulation needed to get the right answer. The software allow 15 days trial and the courses run for at least a month, then you cant use the software by the end of the course.

They should have used Excel Solver instead of ASP as not everybody will have access to that after completing the trial provided along with the course.

Solver gave me a temporary license which quickly expired before I finished all the classes. I have contacted them multiple times. This course is honestly not worth the hassle of trying to get access to their software. The desktop version doesn't work on my computer and the 365 temporary trial quickly expired. This was one of the worst experiences I've had on coursera.

The course inside have not any deep content. All generic topics and few couple of good videos. The teacher is reading the script all the time and make you feel wasted your time.

his course will introduce you to the basic elements of academic information seeking - we will explore the search process from defining a strategy to evaluating and documenting your search results. Attending the course will make you a proficient information seeker. You will learn how to carry out comprehensive literature searches based on your own research assignment. You will be guided through the various information seeking steps from selecting relevant search strategies and techniques to evaluating your search results, documenting your search process and citing your sources. Attending the course will enable you to: • Identify your information need • Evaluate databases and other information resources • Set up search strategies and use various search techniques • Formulate search strings based on your own research assignment • Identify relevant material types • Undertake critical evaluation of your sources • Search more efficiently on the internet • Avoid plagiarism • Cite correctly • Work with reference management • Document your search process The course is intended for undergraduate students but the lessons will be useful to anyone who is interested in becoming better at finding scientific information. There are no formal requirements for the course. The series consists of 21 lectures that are organized into three modules. The lectures include small assignments and quizzes (to check comprehension). The lectures will each touch upon a topic that is essential to the information seeking process. To get the most out of the lecture series, we recommend that you access the lectures while you are working on an academic paper. We also recommend that you watch the lectures in the order in which we have structured them. We recommend that you create and fill out a log book while attending the lectures. We have created a log book template that you can use during the course.

This is the third course in the Advanced Business Analytics specialization. This is good course on the subject of prescriptive analytics subject. It starts with cluster analysis and takes you all the way to optimization for decision analytics. The material is covered using a practical tool named Analytic Solver which provides a different approach to the subject by focusing on the high-level aspects of the models. This allows the learner to cover a lot of techniques in a relatively short period of time while at the same time providing the learner with a broad vision and understanding of the field of study.

Decision making is a difficult process, both in professional and personal fronts, especially in complex cases with many decision variables, constraints, objective functions and risks. Lot many tools are available now a days to solve complex problems. However the knowledge of how to model the problem and what method to be used is very critical in arriving at the right solutions. This course provides an excellent understanding of the basics for the same, and would recommend to managerial & engineering professionals and career aspirants in analytics.

I deeply appreciate the efforts of Prof. Laguna for making this wonderful and complete comprehensive course on Business Analytics for Decision Making. I am confident that, I learned important tools and fundamentals concepts of Business modelling, optimization models which will be highly useful for me in my work folio. I request Prof. Laguna to bring more courses related to this domain and cover other advanced analytics concepts. I would love to enroll in other courses also. Thank you very much. Great Job done..!! University of Colorado Boulder..

Good introduction to the Analytic Solver Platform for Excel used for various prediction and prescriptive modeling. Could use better integration of slides and transcripts but that is a personal preference since I like my notes to read more like a textbook rather than spread across a simple text file, a video, a sparse PowerPoint deck, and some Excel workbooks. Too disjointed for easy review in my mind.

I would like to recommend this course to the business analyst aspirants. It is really intriguing and helps to develop analytical skills. The examples and assignments are perfect to train a beginner. I think this is a practical and insightful course for understanding what business analysis is and how models apply in reality by providing useful and familiar examples. Highly recommend this course

This course is very helpful and highly recommended for a beginner to have an understanding of analyzing the business problem and how to build a model to solve such a problem. It also introduces an analytic platform via Excel Solver (Basic) and Analytic Solver (which is able to have a free trial via a link in the lecture). The examples are practical, well structured, and easy to follow.

This is a great course. Before this course, when I make a decision, I just considered the expectation value. But after this course, I found that when considering the distribution of the variables, the expectation values cannot present the risk when making a decision. Thanks for this course, I get to know the ASPE to make simulation and optimizations.