The School of Graduate and Professional Education at Deree-The American College of Greece in collaboration with SAS, is offering a Joint Certificate in Business Analytics and Data Mining.
Coursework involves undertaking a practical data exploitation project using SAS tools (SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Enterprise Miner) and applying the data management, reporting and business analytics techniques learned during the ITC 6420 SAS Platform for Business Analytics course. Participants will be asked to use methodologies such as RFM analysis for customer segmentation, market basket analysis for next best offer related decisions, and predictive analytics for optimizing the ROI of a campaign, for facilitating decision making. In order to obtain the certification students must:
- Submit a professional business report and related software.
- Deliver an oral presentation of the project.
- Pass two lab based exams.
Project release date: 15-30 May
Submission Deadline: 31 August / No extension will be provided
Where: The American College of Greece Aghia Paraskevi Campus (6 Gravias Str., 153 42, Aghia Paraskevi)
Language of Instruction: English at proficiency level
Participation Requirements
To participate in the SAS – MS Data Science, ACG Joint Certificate in Business Analytics and Data Mining the students must have completed successfully the ITC 6420 SAS Platform for Business Analytics of the MS in Data Science. The students have also the option to either take the certificate while they remain registered for the MS in Data Science, or in the academic year following completion of their master’s degree. For candidates who have entered the MS in Data Science Program after Winter 2020, a certificate assessment fee of €200 will apply.
Learning Outcomes
- Use Data Management techniques to real world data to bring it to a form suitable for decision making processes.
- Use Reporting techniques to help an organisation explore large amounts of data, identify business problems and propose solutions.
- Use modern Business Analytics techniques such as RFM Analysis, Market Basket Analysis and Customer Response Models to help an organisation segment its customer base, make next best offer and product related decisions and optimize the ROI of its campaign.
- Master the use of two state of the art software tools i.e. SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Enterprise Miner.
- Apply business analysis techniques to define business problems from unstructured data.
- Practice presentation and reporting skills to describe problematic situations to business people and provide solutions.
Deliverables and Assessment
Deliverable
The deliverables are: a) a business report to be addressed at the commercial department of the organization and has the objective to help the company make decisions, b) the SAS Enterprise Guide project (a file with egp extension) that has the work done about Data Management and Reporting, c) the SAS Enterprise Miner project. Graphs and tables along with their interpretation can be included in the main body but technical details about the use of the software should be placed in the appendix. The report deliverable should be between 4000 and 6000 words excluding the appendix. Students are also obliged to provide their credentials from the cloud software used so as the technical work done with the SAS tools to be evaluated.
Oral Examination (Presentation of the deliverable)
Third Week of September
Max 15 min presentation and 10 min questions by the examiner.
The presentation should be addressed to the commercial director of the company and hence should be in business format. No technicalities should be included (e.g. business analytics, software and data management terminology) and the presenter should focus on how the results of the software and the quantitative techniques used can help the organization make business decisions. At the end of the presentation the examiner will ask both business and technical questions.
Data Management and Reporting Exams (SAS Enterprise Guide)
Fourth Week of September
The exam will be of two (2) hours duration and it will have similar format with the midterm exam of the SAS Platform for Business Analytics course. Students will have to process, manage and report data with the use of SAS Enterprise Guide and the deliverable should be an egp file. The objective of this exam will be to prove that students have conducted the data management and reporting part of the milestone project by themselves.
Data Mining Exams (SAS Enterprise Miner)
Fifth Week of September
The exam will be of two (2) hours duration. Students will have to apply data mining techniques to data using SAS Enterprise Miner and interpret the results output by the software. The deliverable should be the output of the software along with a word document where the interpretation of the output will be provided. The objective of this exam will be to prove that students have conducted the data mining part of the milestone project by themselves.
Assessment
The first part of the assessment includes: a) the Data Managements and Reporting Exams and b) the Data Mining Exams whereas the second part of the assessment includes: a) the business report deliverable, b) the software deliverables, c) the oral presentations.
In order for the second part of the assessment to be assessed students must pass successfully the first part of the assessment. If this is not the case students will fail the certificate process without the deliverables of the second part of the assessment to be evaluated.
If the first part of the assessment is passed successfully, then the second part of the assessment will be evaluated from a business and technical perspective and then it will be decided whether the student will pass or fail the Joint Certificate process.
The threshold for passing the first part of the assessment is 80% that should be achieved in each one of the two lab – based exams. The breakdown of grades for the second part of the assessment is as follows: Presentation: 40%, Software Deliverable: 30%, Report Deliverable: 30%. The threshold for passing this second part of assessment is 80%.
The students will receive an overall pass/ fail grade based on the total grade pf the second part of the assessment, and they may retake the certificate only once.
All the gradings will be done using the US system.
Supervision
Supervision
Students can ask from the instructor for up to two meetings to discuss the progress of their work, but they are not allowed to ask for help on how to do tasks that are asked in the project. If students need to do some task using the software that has not been demonstrated during class should look it up in the software’s manual.
Course Fees
For candidates who have entered the MS in Data Science Program after Winter 2020, a certificate assessment fee of €200 will apply.
Instructor: Andreas Zaras
Andreas Zaras holds a first degree (ptychion) in Operational Research & Marketing (specialization in Management Science/ Operational Research) from the Athens University of Economics & Business and an MSc in Management Science & Operational Research from Warwick Business School, UK. He also holds an MSc in Finance (specialization in Econometrics) from ALBA Graduate Business School, for which he received a full scholarship. Andreas works for SAS Institute since 2003 where he is involved in the consulting and pre – sales activities of the office. He is also heavily occupied with the academic initiatives and very often acts as a trainer in SAS Programming, Statistics, Operational Research, Forecasting and Data Mining courses. He has also participated as a consultant in a number of projects related to data driven decision making in sub areas such as data integration, data quality, business intelligence and business analytics. Andreas has also taught postgraduate courses in Marketing Analytics, Data Mining, Forecasting, Statistics and Decision Making at ALBA Graduate Business School, Athens University of Economics and Business, University of Athens, University of Patras, University of Central Lancashire – Cyprus Campus, Cyprus International Institute of management and Deree – American College of Greece. His research work in operational research, econometrics and business intelligence, has appeared in the proceedings of National Conferences of the Hellenic OR Society. Finally, Andreas is a member of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences and the Hellenic Operational Research Society and he is a certified SAS Programmer.