Learner Reviews & Feedback for Foundations of strategic business analytics by ESSEC Business School

Pathetic description of requirements. Advance knowledge of excel is required before doing this.

Prof. Glady is an excellent lecturer. The course is very well produced, and the recitals were a great introduction to using code to solve business questions.

This course is fantastic and contains insight and material that is difficult to find elsewhere. It is enjoyable, but it isn't easy. The level of analysis required in the final week on some of the suggested data sets goes above the level of R programming described in the course, so you'll have to do some additional learning if you're not an R user. Unfortunately, it often takes a little too long for the peer reviewing to take place, but other than that the course is one of the best on Coursera.

Practical skills taught for how to use data tool for business purpose. It is exactly what i am looking for!

If you do not know anything about R, it is suggestible to take basic R language course before enrolling in this one.

I myself was a newbie in data field, but I took several courses of "Data Science" by John Hopkins University before starting this one. I am delighted to find that the coding thing I learned would finally have a role to play in possible future career.

I am only at Week 2 so far, but the techniques presented in this course, enhanced by the quality of the recitals (which walk you through the R-code application of the concepts presented) are very relevant to the subject matter.

I would not recommend taking this course without a decent background in R; however, the recitals do a good job at helping even beginners understand the application of statistical models to business decisions.

Learning a lot from this course! The instructor addressed real business case scenarios and delivered everything that was stated in the course objectives. Both the style and the content were well balanced in terms of strategic business issues and tools to address those.

The final course assignment was not defined precisely enough which led to varying interpretations among graders and reduces grades for all as a result.

Otherwise a good intro course for the analytics specialization that focuses on the managerial aspects of data analytics and the communication of results.

I wish that links to supplementary reading on the statistics used in the course would be provided.

The course covers a great deal of content, which is very relevant to day to day business context.

However, the course instructors can certainly do a better job on providing clear instructions on Projects and phrasing of Quiz questions. Some of the phrasing of questions/deliverables can be confusing and often requires rigorous deciphering.

I thnik the course is very interested and very good organized and you learn some interesting things.Prior exposure with R is neccesary and in my opinion if in the assignements existed some more questions in order to spent more time in R the course would have been even better..

I didn't think that it was made clear enough that you needed prior understanding of different topics. For example, you would certainly need prior knowledge of analytics and of coding in order to be successful in this course.

I found that the structure was quite disjointed and that you are not given enough information to complete the assignments.

I enjoyed this class, but the content feels amateurish. One major detracting factor is grading of the exams- a complete waste of time where there are multiple examples of contradictory slides to the quiz questions. The quizes often ask for information that is beyond the scope of the lectures and steadily becomes a process of just retaking exams until you get a 100%. I don't think the quizes reinforced the material in the lecture but actually took away from the class. This class was at it's best during the recitals, where I actually got to understand the great strategies used in the videos.

Even when this course is already a few years old, the content is still very relevant. Compared to other business analytics courses I have seen, this one is very hands-on. You learn by doing, which is good. If you are not familiar with R but understand the concepts for table manipulation in Excel, Matlab, or Python Pandas, it should be relatively easy to learn the R basics.

The R examples are quite detailed, well commented, and cover a wide range of analytics cases, such that if you come across something new you will be able to categorize it most likely into one of these examples.

Truly found the content extremely useful and well organized. Would recommend to any consultant tasked with sourcing, discovering, and communicating data with their clients, including analysts (who can appreciate the recitals) and managers (who can skip the recitals while still gaining terrific concepts and strategies from the lecture videos).

Great course! I believe it would be a good idea to have the text beside the videos, not below. Also, one thing that was difficult for me was the pre-process of the data (handling NA's). I believe that you should suggest some methods for that and what is the right way to do. Thank you!

Best regards,

Evgenia Rodopoulou

Great course to gain VERY valuable knowledge in business analytics. It's great that they provide you with R scripts that you can use anytime to remind yourself of the analysis. All in all, a highly recommendable course for anyone with data science skills willing to apply them in the field of business analytics.

Great content for an introduction of how statistics and data analysis can be applied to business situations. The recitals are great to practice and go deeper. Be careful though, you still need to be computer-savvy and have good notions in statistics and computer science to make the most of this course!

Excellent course. It provided a perfect mix of theoretical lectures (although focused on real life examples) and practical use cases of R Programming in the business context. I would recommend it to anyone wishing to expand their data analytics toolkit. I found it extremely relevant and enjoyable.

It is great as it was to doing this course. The content and the lectures was really fantastic. Complexity comes into practical experience with serious of learning materials. Highly appreciated and recommended the course. This would be window to many other opportunities. Thanks in advance.

merci pour ce très intéressant MOOC, qui m'a permis très rapidement de me remémorer des bases de l'économétrie, de même qu'il m'a enseigné de très utiles fondations en stratégies d'entreprises. Je le recommande vivement. Je vais d'ailleurs continuer et m'inscrire pour la spécialisation

Very relevant course

Teaches the interpretations of advanced analytic techniques - has a nice balance between the communications and the hard technical aspect. Would recommend it. However, for those who are not already familiar with the hard technical aspect, the course may be daunting.

The course is excellent, teaches a business level focus on Data. The examples given are all relevant to business. Really mind opening, really challenging, really enjoyable. One caveat: high level of R knowledge required to get the most from the course. t

Good course for people who just started to open business analytics. For people who are mature, it is basic. So I cannot say that this is an advance level and there is no clear explanation for R functions and mathematical methods using in this course.

This course does well to balance its focus on strategy and analytics. The analytics aren't overly in-depth, allowing for less technical individuals to reap benefits from the course. I highly recommend this course to consultants and business analysts.

I had a good understanding of R, regression & classification algorithms. I found this course very helpful in understanding how those methods can be implemented in analyzing various business problems for strategic planning.

A truly fabulous MOOC. Granted you have to be proficient in R and have an understanding of business practices for maximum benefit but it is well worth gaining such skills just to take this course - you won't regret it.