Continuing ed, executive forum, CAP webinars, maturity model

Continuing education analytics courses

INFORMS’ continuing education program is designed specifically for those in the field of analytics and operations research. INFORMS, the world’s largest organization for advanced analytics professionals, produces and disseminates data analytics and operations research information, training courses, certification, and best-in-class resources for our members and the industry at large.

The intensive, hands-on courses provide real take-away value. Following are dates and locations for the 2015 March through May courses:

Data Exploration & Visualization, March 19-20, Dallas
Hands-on training that focuses on the critical steps in the process of analyzing data: accessing and extracting data, cleaning and preparing data, exploring and visualizing data. This course uses several of the most popular software tools intensively, and provides an overview of the range of available software options.

Foundations of Modern Predictive Analytics, April 15-16, Huntington Beach, Calif.
Learn data mining techniques and tools that will allow you to make the link between business needs and your technical skills. This course gives you hands-on practice in handling real data types, real business problems and practical methods for delivering business-useful results.

Introduction to Monte Carlo and Discrete-Event Simulation, May 28-29, Washington, D.C.
Identify real-world problem types appropriate for simulation, and develop skills and intuition for applying Monte Carlo and discrete-event simulation techniques. Via hands-on interactive sessions, you will investigate the use of Monte Carlo simulation in decision-making and the use of discrete-event simulation to solve mathematically intractable problems in stochastic modeling.

For detailed course information on all INFORMS courses and to register, visit www.informs.org/continuinged. 

Executive Forum: Strategic Use of Analytics & O.R.

Presented by INFORMS, the executive forum, “Especially for Senior Executives: Strategic Use of Analytics & O.R.” will be held April 12 in Huntington Beach, Calif., in conjunction with the INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research.

The invitation-only event for senior executives provides decision-makers with a bottom-line understanding of how business analytics and O.R. are used to drive better organizational decisions. The forum is tailored to help executives get the most out of the conference, with a special networking reception hosted by the INFORMS Board of Directors, selected executive-level talks and special executive seating at the Edelman Gala celebration of the very best examples of difference-making analytics and O.R. projects.

For further information and an application, click here. 

Free certification informational webinar series

Because the question asked most often about INFORMS’ Certified Analytics Professional (CAP®) program is, “How do I prepare?”, CAP volunteers and staff developed a series of webinars designed to increase candidate awareness of the exam content. The webinar series began in December 2014 and ended in February. During this period, a new webinar was delivered every two weeks on the INFORMS channel of BrightTALK (www.brighttalk.com). The webinars follow a similar format; each provides an introduction, about 50 minutes of presentation and a Q&A segment.

The live presentations of these webinars have ended; recorded presentations are available for free at any time. While the presentations don’t provide specific questions that are on the exam, there is a review of the types of questions that you will find on the exam.

Following is a list of webinars along with short biographical statements of the presenters.  The presenters are experts in their fields, all have the CAP credential and are co-chairs and authors of the free CAP Study Guide.

Webinar 1 gives an overview of the CAP program and includes some study hints for those who might need them. You will find that the CAP program is not just an exam; it includes what the “5 Es”: education, experience, effectiveness, ethics and the exam.
Presenters: Scott Nestler, CAP, and Matt Windham, CAP. Nestler is a colonel in the U.S. Army and was an instructor at Naval Postgraduate School. Windham is the director of Analytics for NTELX and has extensive experience in studying for exams from which to provide study hints.

Webinar 2 discusses the content areas of Domain 1 (business problem framing) and Domain 2 (analytics problem framing). Those topics form the nucleus of an analytics project and are revisited throughout the project to further confirm or refine the problem.  Presenters: Dr. Frank Stein, CAP. Stein is director of IBM’s Analytics Solutions Center (ASC) in Washington, D.C. He has spent most of his career in R&D, with the last 14 years at IBM where he works with the Analytics Solution Center and the Federal Innovation Solution Center. He is also part of IBM’s team working with customers on Watson and cognitive computing solutions.

Webinar 3 is centered on Domain 3 (data). Data is the domain with the largest representation in the exam because it is provides input to much of the work of an analytics project. Analytics professionals need data to provide answers; often those data are missing or are not presented in compatible formats or need further work before they can answer the problem.

Presenter: Dr. Robert Bordley, CAP. Bordley works at Booz-Allen Hamilton and teaches night courses in both decision analysis and systems engineering at the University of Michigan. He has been a program director of the National Science Foundation, technical director and technical fellow at General Motors and is a prolific author with more than 80 published papers to his credit.

Webinar 4 addresses Domain 4, methodology selection. This goes hand in hand with the data: what methodology are you going to select that can most effectively and efficiently use the data to answer the problem.

Presenter: Dr. Subhashish (Sub) Samaddar, CAP. Dr. Samaddar is a member of the faculty in the Department of Managerial Sciences of the J. Mack Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University in Atlanta. His research focuses on managing operations, information technology and knowledge systems for enhancing organizational effectiveness where he is an international expert.

Webinar 5 combines Domain 5 (model building), Domain 6 (deployment) and Domain 7 (lifecycle management). The course covers building a model to use the selected methodology to answer the business problem. Once a model is built, it must be deployed and carefully managed over its lifecycle to make sure that it continues to perform as intended and continues to provide good answers.

Presenter: Alan Taber, CAP. Taber is a member of Lockheed’s Surface Systems Chief Engineer group. He spent two years at the Skunk Works followed by 14 years at Lockheed Martin Mission Systems & Training in a variety of increasingly responsible roles, including software project management, combat system engineering and renewable energy. He currently runs the Spreadsheet Guru contest that is part of the Analytics Conference.

As noted, these webinars are free of charge and candidates for CAP can view them as they need: to refresh their knowledge of specific portions of the job/task analysis, to review exam content or simply to find out more about some area of analytics. If after listening to any of these webinars you have a question, direct it to [email protected]. 

Analytics Maturity Model: Check strengths, weaknesses to improve

The new INFORMS Analytics Maturity Model (AMM) is proving to be a reliable self-assessment tool for analytics experts who want to determine how well their organizations gain the benefits of analytics. AMM allows you to input data about your organization – data is double encrypted to ensure security – rank your use of analytics on a 10-point scale and reuse the model to do comparisons over time.

The model helps users create a self-improvement plan and timeline. Helpful links to the INFORMS website help you with your improvement plan. Later this year, users will be able to benchmark their scores against others in the same industry.
Access the INFORMS Analytics Maturity Model at https://analyticsmaturity.informs.org/.