DATA SCIENCE

SYLLABUS FOR BBA

Course Outcomes: At the end of the course, the students will be able to
Understand the scope of data science and its applications in the business.
Get acquainted with data science processes and to apply in business.
Familiarize with concepts of data mining and its applicants.
Familiarize with concepts of machine learning and its applicants.

UNIT I
Introduction: Data-Analytic Thinking:The Ubiquity of Data Opportunities ,Example: Hurricane
Frances ,Example: Predicting Customer Churn ,Data Science, Engineering, and Data-Driven Decision
Making ,Data Processing and “Big Data” ,From Big Data 1.0 to Big Data 2.0,Data and Data Science
Capability as a Strategic Asset ,Data-Analytic Thinking.
Business Problems and Data Science Solutions: Fundamental concepts: A set of canonical data mining
tasks,The data mining process,Supervised versus unsupervised data mining,From Business Problems to
Data Mining Tasks ,Supervised Versus Unsupervised Methods,Data Mining and Its Results ,The Data
Mining Process ,Data Implications for Managing the Data Science Team ,Other Analytics Techniques and
Technologies.
UNIT II
Introduction to Predictive Modeling: From Correlation to Supervised Segmentation, Fundamental
concepts: Identifying informative attributes; Segmenting data by progressive attribute
selection,Exemplary techniques: Finding correlations; Attribute/variable selection; Tree
induction,Models, Induction, and Prediction ,Supervised Segmentation, Visualizing Segmentations ,Trees
as Sets of Rules ,Probability Estimation.
Fitting a Model to Data Fundamental concepts: Finding “optimal” model parameters based on data;
Choosing the goal for data mining; Objective functions; Loss functions. Exemplary techniques: Linear
regression; Logistic regression; Support-vector machines. Classification via Mathematical Functions,
Linear Discriminant Functions ,Optimizing an Objective Function , An Example of Mining a Linear
Discriminant from Data , Linear Discriminant Functions for Scoring and Ranking Instances ,Support
Vector Machines, Briefly, Regression via Mathematical Functions ,Class Probability Estimation and
Logistic “Regression” .
UNIT III
Decision Analytic Thinking I: What Is a Good Model? Fundamental concepts: Careful consideration of
what is desired from data science results; Expected value as a key evaluation framework; Consideration
of appropriate comparative baselines. Exemplary techniques: Various evaluation metrics; Estimating
costs and benefits; Calculating expected profit; Creating baseline methods for comparison. Evaluating
Classifiers ,Plain Accuracy and Its Problems ,The Confusion Matrix ,Problems with Unbalanced
Classes,Problems with Unequal Costs and Benefits ,Generalizing Beyond Classification ,A Key Analytical
Framework: Expected Value ,Using Expected Value to Frame Classifier Use ,Using Expected Value to
Frame Classifier Evaluation ,Baseline Performance, and Implications for Investments in Data
Visualizing Model Performance Fundamental concepts: Visualization of model performance under
various kinds of uncertainty; Further consideration of what is desired from data mining results.
Exemplary techniques: Profit curves; Cumulative response curves; Lift curves; ROC curves. Ranking
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Instead of Classifying ,Profit Curves ,ROC Graphs and Curves ,The Area Under the ROC Curve
(AUC) ,Cumulative Response and Lift Curves ,Example: Performance Analytics for Churn Modeling
UNIT IV
Decision Analytic Thinking II: Toward Analytical Engineering Fundamental concept: Solving business
problems with data science starts with analytical engineering: designing an analytical solution, based on
the data, tools, and techniques available. Exemplary technique: Expected value as a framework for data
science solution design.Targeting the Best Prospects for a Charity Mailing ,The Expected Value
Framework: Decomposing the Business Problem and Recomposing the Solution Pieces ,A Brief
Digression on Selection Bias, Our Churn Example Revisited with Even More Sophistication ,The Expected
Value Framework: Structuring a More Complicated Business Problem ,Assessing the Influence of the
Incentive,From an Expected Value Decomposition to a Data Science Solution.
Other Data Science Tasks and Techniques: Fundamental concepts: Our fundamental concepts as the
basis of many common data science techniques; The importance of familiarity with the building blocks
of data science. Exemplary techniques: Association and co-occurrences; Behavior profiling; Link
prediction; Data reduction; Latent information mining; Movie recommendation; Biasvariance
decomposition of error; Ensembles of models; Causal reasoning from data. Co-occurrences and
Associations: Finding Items That Go Together ,Measuring Surprise: Lift and Leverage ,Example: Beer and
Lottery Tickets ,Associations Among Facebook Likes ,Profiling: Finding Typical Behavior ,Link Prediction
and Social Recommendation,Data Reduction, Latent Information, and Movie Recommendation,Bias,
Variance, and Ensemble Methods,Data-Driven Causal Explanation and a Viral Marketing Example
UNIT V
Data Science and Business Strategy Fundamental concepts: Our principles as the basis of success for a
data-driven business; Acquiring and sustaining competitive advantage via data science; The importance
of careful curation of data science capability. Thinking Data-Analytically, Redux,Achieving Competitive
Advantage with Data Science,Sustaining Competitive Advantage with Data Science,Formidable Historical
Advantage ,Unique Intellectual Property ,Unique Intangible Collateral Assets,Superior Data
Scientists,Superior Data Science Management ,Attracting and Nurturing Data Scientists and Their Teams
Applying Our Fundamental Concepts to a New Problem: Mining Mobile Device Data, Changing the Way
We Think about Solutions to Business Problems ,What Data Can’t Do: Humans in the Loop,
Revisited,Privacy, Ethics, and Mining Data About Individuals ,Is There More to Data Science? Final
Example: From Crowd-Sourcing to Cloud-Sourcing.
Suggested Readings:
 Provost and Tom Fawcett, Data Science for Business, Shroff Publisher, 2018.
 James Evans, Business Analytics, 2e, Pearson, 2017.
 David R.H. and Galit Shmueli, Getting Started with Business Analytics, CRC Press, 2013
 Foster Seema Acharya & Subhashini Chellappan: Big Data and Analytics, Wiley Publications, New
Delhi, 2015.
 Machine Learning for Absolute Beginners, O Theobald, 2e, 2015
 Artificial Intelligence Basics: A Non-Technical Introduction, Tom Taulli, Apress, 2019