With its emphasis on industry-standard tools, the MSA program gives students the opportunity to tangibly demonstrate their level of understanding through the completion of professional certifications in collaboration with SAS. Reena and Sofie (right) are two of the dozen MSA students who succeeded in completing SAS programmer certifications this fall. Most students have chosen the option of completing the SAS professional certifications as an adjunct to their MSA studies. SAS certifications are a widely sought credential among employers across industry today. It adds credibility to a job candidate’s proven ability to function with the latest software tools in solving analytical problems. The certification opportunity is a key feature of the MSA program that helps to reinforce the link between learning and doing. Students can take advantage of several SAS training courses to prepare for the certification exams, including certifications in base programming , advanced programming, data mining and predictive analytics.
Institute Signs Lease in Venture 3
The Institute for Advanced Analytics secured a short-term sublease on the first floor in Venture 3, which is adjacent to existing offices in the Venture 2 building on Centennial Campus. The present schedule is to occupy the new location by October 15. The lease will extend to the end of the current academic year pending approval by the NCSU Board of Trustees in September. Venture 3 will have a classroom, work areas for student teams, offices for staff, and wireless networking and teleconferencing facilities.
The Institute’s head office will remain in Venture 2.
Earp Speaks at Analytics Summit
Dr. Julie Earp participated on a panel discussion at the Business Analytics Concours Research Summit held September 25-27 at Babson College in Boston. The executive-level event featured Tom Davenport, author of Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning. Dr. Earp spoke about the Master of Science in Analytics. Dr. Earp specializes in data privacy and is the architect, along with Dr. Laurie Williams, of the Analytics Practicum.
Students Attend Data Mining Conference
David Dobson (MSA ’08) will present his paper titled “Automobile Insurance Customers Profiling: A Business Application Case Study” at a poster session of the 10th Annual Data Mining Conference (M2007), in Las Vegas. Dobson will be joined by classmate Theresa Gilligan, who will share information about the MSA degree program with attendees in the exhibition hall. M2007 is one of the premiere venues for presenting data mining research and applications each year.
Fall Semester Classes Underway
Students in the Master of Science in Analytics program moved into the second phase of their studies with the commencement of fall semester classes today. The curriculum consists of newly developed “modular” courses designed for and limited to MSA students. Unlike conventional degree programs on campus, the MSA semester is partitioned into three segments each of which is five weeks in duration. The modules are taught by an interdisciplinary team of nine faculty from six departments in four colleges. The fall semester includes modules on topics such as Time Series and Forecasting, Optimization, Text Analytics, Customer Analytics, Data Security and Privacy, Geographical Data Analytics, Survival Analysis and Data Mining. With fall semester also begins the Analytics Practicum, in which students are organized into teams and engage with sponsoring organizations to work on real-world problems.
MSA Students Celebrate End of Summer
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.
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.
 |
 |
 |
 |
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.