The intensive summer program, which ran full-time daily over a continuous 5-week stretch, was concluded successfully with a luncheon celebration at Lake Johnson Recreation Center in Raleigh. The summer program included 21 lecturers and 9 invited guest speakers covering a range of topics that focused on understanding the practical application of industry standard software tools to problems in advanced analytics. Many thanks to the joint NC State-SAS team that labored over the past year to plan and organize the summer session.
Author: Michael Rappa
Teams Present Results of Summer Project
The summer curriculum culminated today with a series of team presentations made by two dozen MSA students. The students were presented with a challenging analytics project developed by Dr. Henry Schaffer, Dr. Jerry Oglesby and Laura Ladrie, using masked data on 100,000 records of consumer transactions. Teams were set to the task of data cleaning and analysis to uncover consumer patterns relevant to the business. Each of the six teams succeeded in highlighting significant facets in the the unique data sets they were given to analyze.
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Faculty Attend Summit on Teaching Data Mining
Two members of the Analytics faculty — David Dickey and Simon Hsiang — attended an invitation-only week long program for educators who teach data mining, sponsored by SAS Institute. Topics included pattern discovery (segmentation, association, and sequence analyses) and predictive modeling (decision tree, regression, and neural network models), and case studies from the fields of database marketing, financial services, Continue reading “Faculty Attend Summit on Teaching Data Mining”
Noted Expert Speaks on Performance Management
Howard Rohm, Executive Director of the Balanced Scorecard Institute and President of the Strategy Management Group, spoke with MSA students today. A noted authority on balanced scorecard and performance management systems, Rohm has developed systems for numerous organization in both the public and private sectors in the U.S. and abroad. His lecture was part of a day long program on Strategic Performance as part of the MSA summer course.
Midsummer Outing to Durham Bulls Game
Marking the midpoint of the summer course, MSA students enjoyed an evening out to watch a Durham Bulls baseball game. Pre-game recommended reading is, of course: Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis. The Bulls were made famous by Bull Durham, the 1988 Oscar-nominated movie starring Kevin Costner as “Crash Davis,” which was filmed locally around Raleigh and Durham.
Guest Speakers Welcome MSA Class of ’08
The Master of Science in Analytics (MSA) Class of 2008 kicked-off the new academic year this week with a group of distinguished guest speakers who discussed the growing importance of advanced analytics in today’s world. The two-day series was organized by Dr. Herbert Kirk and Dr. Jerry Oglesby. Guests included:
- Michael J. A. Berry, cofounder of Data Miners, and noted author on several books on Data Mining with Gordon Linoff.
- Randall Collica, Senior Business Analyst at Hewlett-Packard, and author of CRM Segmentation and Clustering Using SAS Enterprise Miner.
- James Mendelsohn, Vice President for Corporate Strategy, Capital One.
- William B. Smith, Ph.D., Executive Director of the American Statistical Association.
Summer Classes Begin for Incoming Students
Two dozen students representing ten countries of origin enrolled in the Master of Science in Analytics degree program’s inaugural class today. The enrollment number represents a strong result in light of the compressed admissions cycle for this year’s class. The class is evenly split between men and women, NC residents and non-residents, and US citizens and non-citizens. The median age is 30 and the median number of years of work experience is 6. Half of the students enrolled have a prior graduate degree.
[ Students in the MSA Class of 2008 ]
Class of 2008 Orientation
An orientation will be held for students enrolled in the Master of Science in Analytics (MSA) Class of 2008 on Friday, July 6 at 10 am in the Engineering Building 2, Room 1228.
Survey of Prospective Students
Over the past four months an online survey of prospective students for the Master of Science in Analytics was conducted with the goal of better understanding the potential student population for the degree. The following is a summary of the results gathered from over 300 respondents. Continue reading “Survey of Prospective Students”
Offer Made for Admission to MSA
The MSA program completed its admissions process on May 31 by extending an offer to 39 applicants to join the Class of 2008. Although the time frame this year for recruiting was compressed into less than 90 days, the program attracted a pool of 114 applicants. Those who were offered admission are strong in both their academic credentials and professional experience. Continue reading “Offer Made for Admission to MSA”