Back to Optimization for Decision Making
University of Minnesota

Optimization for Decision Making

In this data-driven world, companies are often interested in knowing what is the "best" course of action, given the data. For example, manufacturers need to decide how many units of a product to produce given the estimated demand and raw material availability? Should they make all the products in-house or buy some from a third-party to meet the demand? Prescriptive Analytics is the branch of analytics that can provide answers to these questions. It is used for prescribing data-based decisions. The most important method in the prescriptive analytics toolbox is optimization. This course will introduce students to the basic principles of linear optimization for decision-making. Using practical examples, this course teaches how to convert a problem scenario into a mathematical model that can be solved to get the best business outcome. We will learn to identify decision variables, objective function, and constraints of a problem, and use them to formulate and solve an optimization problem using Excel solver and spreadsheet.

Status: Data-Driven Decision-Making
Status: Data Modeling
BeginnerCourse14 hours

Featured reviews

NR

5.0Reviewed Sep 17, 2021

Very insightful course. Love the detail explaination for solving simple LP problems.

JI

5.0Reviewed Jan 15, 2024

The professor was easy to follow. I learned more from this course than a whole semester of Optimization in my graduate class.

JH

5.0Reviewed May 31, 2021

There are a lot of examples to work through and learn from which I find helps make the material easier to learn.

CL

5.0Reviewed May 15, 2021

Good teaching style with step by step guidance. Thanks for the connecting high school math (that I learned many years ago) to real life context. I look forward to the next course.

CW

4.0Reviewed Apr 16, 2021

It was an interesting refreshed for the most part and went very quickly. Could have used just a little more info on using Excel Solver. Thanks for the class!

TB

5.0Reviewed Jul 16, 2023

I found this course excellent, almost one could say, optimal!

VP

5.0Reviewed Aug 15, 2025

The course is good for learning fundamentals of optimisation using linear programming !

AO

5.0Reviewed May 19, 2023

I love the calmness and the fact the course was detailed and concise as possible. Professor Soumya Sen is a great teacher.

AJ

5.0Reviewed Dec 10, 2025

hands on oriented. good balance of theory and practical

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