Introduction to Data Visualization and Storytelling

Returning course for 2025!

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Course Description:

Step into a world where data comes to life with enchanting data visualizations that tell memorable stories and provide faster insights than tables or reports full of numbers. Creating effective data visualizations can be challenging, even for seasoned data professionals. This course offers an introduction to the fundamental principles and science behind effective data visualization, with an emphasis on transforming everyday charts into powerful communication tools.    

Whether you are an executive leading an organization, a manager leading a team or an individual contributor crafting deliverables, you will need to communicate your findings to an audience. This course will also equip you with storytelling and presentation techniques specific to sharing data insights so that you can effectively persuade or inform your audience.  

Course topics include:

• The “Why” of Data Visualization: Discover why data visualization is so powerful and explore key results from scientific experiments. 
• Fundamentals of Data Visualization: Learn the core elements of data visualizations, how they combine to form impactful visuals and use cases for various chart types. 
• Data Visualization Design: Understand design principles used in data visualizations, how to convey messages through graphic representation and how to make visualizations accessible and inclusive.
• Storytelling with Data: Develop strategies for crafting a compelling narrative that highlights insights and drives engagement.

Course Logistics:

• This training will take place on Monday, September 8, 2025 from 8:00AM - 12:00PM EDT at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort.
• Course length is approximately four hours and offered in-person only.
• Laptops are not required but attendees may bring their own devices.
• Classroom will be set up with tables with electrical outlets to accommodate each attendee.

Correlation vs. Causation: Using Data and Measurement to Improve Business Outcomes

Returning course for 2025!

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Course Description:

Causality lies at the heart of many critical business questions: Do email promotions boost website traffic? Will a new product launch impact the sales of existing products? How can a business optimize its marketing expenditure? While data analysis is essential to answer these types of questions, uncovering causal effects requires the careful application of specific techniques that go beyond measuring simple correlations. This course delves into the fascinating world of data analytics, exploring the delicate balance between correlation and causation. Through engaging business case studies and demonstrations of modern causal inference techniques, you'll gain the skills to make informed, impactful decisions. Join us and revolutionize your understanding of the critical distinction between correlation and causation in data analysis.

Course topics include:

• Thinking Counterfactually: To measure the causal impact of a decision, you need to consider how outcomes would have changed had a different decision been taken.
• The Power of Randomization: Why running experiments is the gold standard for measuring causal effects.
• Leveraging Your Data for Causal Measurement: Hypothetical case studies that demonstrate how to generate causal insights without using randomization through techniques such as natural experiments, event studies, difference in differences and regression discontinuity.
• The Causal Analysis Toolkit: How to leverage experimentation, linear regression and causal diagrams to measure causal effects across a wide variety of hypothetical use cases.

Course Logistics:

• This training will take place on Monday, September 8, 2025 from 8:00AM - 12:00PM EDT at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort.
• Course length is approximately four hours and offered in-person only.
• Laptops are not required but attendees may bring their own devices.
• Classroom will be set up with tables with electrical outlets to accommodate each attendee.

Decision Making Under Uncertainty

New course for 2025!

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Course Description:

When was the last time you made a business decision where you were 100% certain of the outcome? Uncertainty is inevitable when it comes to making key business decisions, yet it tends to be ignored it and decisions are made based on a limited set of scenarios. Rather than ignoring uncertainty, you should use business knowledge and relevant data to quantify the uncertainty that you face, in order to account for all possible scenarios in the decision making process. In this course, we will equip you with the insights and tools needed to incorporate probabilistic thinking into your business decision making.

Course topics include:

• Embracing Uncertainty: Why plans based on a limited set of scenarios often go wrong, and what to do about it.
• Modeling Decisions: An introduction to key tools including decision trees and influence diagrams.
• Designing Simulations: How Monte Carlo simulation helps to quantify and incorporate uncertainty into the decision-making process.
• Leveraging Data: Case studies that demonstrate how to model uncertainty using expert judgment and available data.

Course Logistics:

• This training will take place on Monday, September 8, 2025 from 1:30PM - 5:30PM EDT at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort.
• Course length is approximately four hours and offered in-person only.
• Attendees may bring their own devices. This course includes a hands-on component where participants are encouraged to follow along on their own device in Microsoft Excel.
• Classroom will be set up with tables with electrical outlets to accommodate each attendee.

Empowering Your Data Science Toolkit with Mathematical Optimization

Returning course for 2025!

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Course Description:

Data scientists are adept at transforming vast amounts of data into valuable predictions and insights using modern analytical methods. However, predictive analytics is just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to making optimal business decisions. Questions like, "How much inventory should be allocated to maximize revenue?," "What is the most efficient way to assign team members to tasks?" and "How much should be invested in each project within a portfolio?" often arise. By empowering your data science toolkit with mathematical optimization, you can quantify and evaluate the quality of different choices with respect to key objectives, adhere to business constraints and leverage algorithms to identify the best possible decisions.

Through a series of hypothetical and interactive business case studies, this course will introduce the mathematical optimization framework and discuss a variety of optimization problems, including linear and integer programming. By the end of this course, you will be equipped with the skills to build and solve your own optimization problems using Microsoft Excel, empowering you to transform your predictive analytics into prescriptive analytics.

Course topics include:

• Optimization Framework: Identifying and expressing common problems using an objective, decisions and constraints.
• Optimization Formulation: Translating framework to formulation for business problems that can leverage optimization.
• Types of Optimization Problems: Exploring hypothetical business case studies that require different types of optimization problems, including linear programming, integer programming and binary integer programming.
• Hands-on Optimization: Learning how to set up and solve optimization problems in Microsoft Excel.

Course Logistics:

• This training will take place on Monday, September 8, 2025 from 1:30PM - 5:30PM EDT at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort.
• Course length is approximately four hours and offered in-person only.
• Attendees may bring their own devices. This course includes a hands-on component where participants are encouraged to follow along on their own device in Microsoft Excel.
• Classroom will be set up with tables with electrical outlets to accommodate each attendee.