Thursday, September 29, 2016

Quick stock-taking and FAQs

Hi Class,

We're well past the halfway mark in the DC course and as such, its as good a time as any to take stock of where we are.

To summarize in brief, we covered problem formulation (session 1) and thereafter 3 basic types of research for analytics thereafter which each depend on the clarity and extent of problem definition.

These are Descriptive Analytics (surveys, primarily in Session 2), Exploratory Analytics (Session 3) and Causal (session 4).

Along the way we also picked up concepts and frameworks that help us define, frame and measure objects of interest such as multidimensional mental objects (session 1), constructs (session 2), DC from APIs (session 3), conjoint experimentation and marketplace simulators (session 4).

That's quite a bit covered in just under 8 hours, if you look back and think about it.

However, mere classroom coverage isn't enough. These concepts can get internalized and concrete-ized only with hands-on practice. That is precisely what the homework assignments are supposed to do.

Your group allocation for the group home-works will shortly happen. I've asked the teaching assistant (TA) Mr Vivek to assign people into groups of 4 keeping in mind diversity in background and demographics.

FAQs: Folks have asked me re textbooks, reference material etc. I'd encourage you to visit old blog posts in this blog for past batches where I had shared many links for additional readings. Let me know if they do not meet what you were specifically looking for.

Lastly, I'm happy to see a good amount of interaction, curiosity, Q&A, quite a bit of startup- and entrepreneurial energy in your batch, in line with that in previous batches.

At the end of the class tomorrow, keeping in mind past tradition, I'll request a "photo-finish" - a class photograph with each section before we end the course.

See in class tomorrow. Ciao.

Sudhir

No comments:

Post a Comment