Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Chris Solo

Faculty Spotlight for Dr. Chris Solo.

Banner for Dr. Chris Solo.

Course Overview

BAN 830: Descriptive Analytics for Business

This course explores descriptive analytics tools and techniques across various business scenarios, beginning with traditional methods to answer, "What happened?" Students will acquire, clean, manipulate, and visualize business data using spreadsheets and programming. As the course progresses, students apply advanced statistical techniques like descriptive measures, sampling, estimation, and inference. The course concludes with a transition to predictive analytics, focusing on linear and multiple regression to uncover relationships in business data.

"While you will apply AI tools, this course ensures you have the software and quantitative foundations necessary to move confidently from data to decisions."
Dr. Chris Solo
Associate Clinical Professor, Supply Chain & Information Systems


What You'll Gain

In this foundational course, you will move from simply "having data" to making it work for you. You will become proficient in:

  • Acquiring, cleaning, and organizing data using essential tools like Microsoft Excel, Power BI Desktop, and the R programming language.
  • Applying statistical analysis techniques to uncover meaningful patterns.
  • Providing business-oriented interpretations of your findings so you can clearly and effectively inform decision-makers.

The AI Mindset

You will master interpreting analytical results, moving beyond merely using software to generate data. The real value lies in translating those quantitative findings into actionable insights that drive business strategy.

The Evolving Leader

The AI-driven leader is one who uses technology to accelerate the OODA (Observe-Orient-Decide-Act) loop. You will learn to use AI as a collaborator to:

  • Enhance and speed up data acquisition and cleaning processes.
  • Interpret sophisticated or complex analytical results more efficiently.
  • Make faster, better-informed decisions by leveraging AI as a "savvy" tool in the broader decision-making process.

Faculty Perspective

  • Final word: Over the next few years, AI will become even more deeply embedded in analytics platforms, further shrinking the time between data collection and insight generation.