MGG 433—Data Modeling

All managerial activities revolve around decision-making. One of the hallmarks of successful management in a complex and rapidly changing environment is the ability to recognize decision situations, understand their essential features, and obtain insight that makes clear what the appropriate actions are. Some successful managers seem to have an innate ability to do this. Many consider decision making as an art; something learned by trial and error; something based on creativity, judgment, intuition, and experience rather than anything based on a set of systematic methods. This course will give you a structured way of attacking a wide range of real problems, using data-driven analysis to guide decision-making. We will consider how you can think about and manage uncertainty and risk, how to translate data about the business into useful insights, how to put value on various courses of action, and how to generally make informed decisions. Fundamental to decision making is a model that represents the situation. The spreadsheet-modeling environment is a most widely accepted modeling tool for managerial decision making. This course studies two fundamental issues of decision making, namely, the modeling of situations or problems and the solution of those problems. The purpose of this class is to provide you with a working knowledge of a method to address decision situations in a rational, well-organized manner. Decision analyses using simple yet effective quantitative tools will be explored. The use of computer decision support for these analyses will be emphasized.