Teaching Analytics in Colleges of Business

Abstract

Business Analytics has become a common term in all businesses. The importance of analytics in the modern business environment has made it necessary to include analytics as a foundational course for all business majors. There is much debate on what content should be taught in analytics courses and what is the role of computational skills versus the skills needed to interpret and communicate the results that are needed as part of the analytics process? These problems point to the essential difference between analytics and statistics. As we discuss in this paper, analytics is a process that employs statistical tools. We first discuss the business analytics process which we feel should be taught in all business analytics courses. We then propose a two-course sequence, Business Analytics I and Business Analytics II, to be taught as required courses in colleges of business.