This course earns you a Certificate of Completion from HBS Online. What you earn.
Key Concepts
Who Will Benefit
Film studio executive
I majored in engineering and minored in economics as an undergraduate, but the content of Business Analytics and Economics for Managers showed me new ways for using the theoretical foundations I already had.
MBA Student at Stanford Graduate School of Business
Professor Hammond is an outstanding and inspirational teacher. Her Business Analytics course helped to demystify statistics for me, rendering the subject matter approachable and appealing. The fabulous visualizations and graphics, combined with relevant and interesting case studies, brought the concepts to life in a stimulating and engaging way. Mastery of data analysis is critical for business success and I now feel confident that I have the foundations in place. I am looking forward to embracing this capability further in my career.
Sr. Director Traffic Generation & Web Analytics, adidas Group
What You Earn
Certificate of Completion
Credential of Readiness
Describing and Summarizing Data
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Concepts
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Visualizing Data
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Descriptive Statistics
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Relationship Between Two Variables
Featured Exercises
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Create visual representations of data in Excel -
Define and calculate descriptive statistics -
Create scatter plots and calculate the correlation coefficient
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Sampling and Estimation
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Concepts
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Creating Representative and Unbiased Samples
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The Normal Distribution
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Confidence Intervals
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Amazon's Inventory Sampling
Featured Exercises
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Calculate sample statistics and apply the properties of the normal distribution -
Calculate confidence intervals to estimate the accuracy of statistics
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Hypothesis Testing
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Concepts
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Designing and Performing Hypothesis Tests
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Improving the Customer Experience
Featured Exercises
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Develop and test hypotheses in Excel to assess the impact of changes on an entire population or estimate differences between populations
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Interpret the results of a series of website A/B tests
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Single Variable Linear Regression
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Concepts
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The Regression Line
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Forecasting
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Interpreting the Regression Output
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Performing Regression Analyses
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Forecasting Home Video Units
Featured Exercises
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Identify the best fit line for a data set and interpret its equation through an analysis of housing data
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Perform a regression analysis of box office and home video sales using Excel and interpret the output
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Multiple Regression
Highlights
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Concepts
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The Multiple Regression Equation
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Adapting Concepts from Single Regression
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Performing Multiple Regression Analyses
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New Concepts in Multiple Regression
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The Caesars Staffing Problem
Featured Exercises
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Estimate the relative predictive power of different combinations of variables by performing and interpreting a multiple variable regression analysis using Excel
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Apply multiple regression analysis to a staffing challenge faced by a hotel
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Expand the range of your analysis by using dummy and lagged variables
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Learner Stories
Business Intelligence Analyst at New Zealand's Ministry of Justice
Data Analyst
Business Analytics FAQs
In addition to being a standalone certificate program, Business Analytics is also one component course of the Credential of Readiness (CORe) program, which also includes Economics for Managers and Financial Accounting. Designed for those interested in learning business fundamentals more broadly, CORe program participants progress through the three courses in tandem, and the program concludes with a final exam.
Participants are expected to fully complete all coursework in a thoughtful and timely manner. This will mean meeting each week’s deadline to complete a module of the course and fully answering questions posed therein, including satisfactory performance on the quizzes at the end of each module (earning an average score of 50% or greater). This helps ensure your cohort proceeds through the course at a similar pace and can take full advantage of social learning opportunities. A module is composed of a series of teaching elements (such as faculty videos, simulations, reflections, or quizzes) designed to impart the learnings of the course. In addition to module and assignment completion, we expect participation in the social learning elements of the course by offering feedback on others’ reflections and contributing to conversations on the platform. Participants who fail to complete the course requirements will not receive a certificate and will not be eligible to retake the course.
More detailed information on individual course requirements will be communicated at the start of the course. No grades are assigned for Business Analytics–participants will either be evaluated as complete or not complete.
For more information on grading, please refer to the Policies Page.
Business Analytics participants may be eligible for financial aid based on demonstrated financial need. To receive financial aid, you will be asked to provide supporting documentation. Please refer to our Payment & Financial Aid page.
You will have access to the materials in every prior module as you progress through the program. Access to course materials and the course platform ends 60 days after the final deadline in the program. At the end of each course module, you will be able to download a PDF summary of the module’s key takeaways. At the end of the program, you will receive a PDF compilation of all of the module summary documents.
Harvard Business School Online
Certificate in Business Analytics
[Cohort Start Month and Year]
List your certificate on your LinkedIn profile under "Education" with the language from the Credential Verification page:
School: Harvard Business School Online
Dates Attended: [The year you participated in the program]
Degree: Other; Certificate in Business Analytics
Field of Study: Leave blank
Grade: Complete
Activities and Societies: Leave blank
For the program description on LinkedIn, please use the following:
Business Analytics is an 8-week, 40-hour online certificate program from Harvard Business School. Business Analytics introduces quantitative methods used to analyze data and make better management decisions. Participants hone their understanding of key concepts, managerial judgment, and ability to apply course concepts to real business problems. Business Analytics was developed by leading Harvard Business School faculty and is delivered in an active learning environment based on the HBS signature case-based learning method.
HBS Online Business Analytics and the Harvard Business Analytics Program are completely separate programs.
HBS Online Business Analytics consists of approximately 40 hours of material delivered entirely online through the HBS Online course platform over an eight-week period.
The Harvard Business Analytics Program is an online certificate program offered through a collaboration between Harvard Business School, the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The program consists of six core courses, two seminars, and two in-person immersions, and can be completed in as little as nine months.
These three courses cover different topics related to data and analytics and do so in different ways.
Business Analytics teaches participants to apply basic statistics to real business problems and includes hands-on practice implementing analyses in Excel. The course covers descriptive statistics, sampling and estimation, hypothesis testing, and regression analysis. The course is intended for individuals at all stages of their careers who would like to strengthen their analytical skills, including college students and recent graduates without a background in statistics, those considering an MBA or other graduate program, or professionals seeking data literacy.
Data Science Principles introduces key concepts in data science—such as prediction, causality, visualization, data wrangling, privacy, and ethics—but does so without coding or mathematical application. The course is intended for organizational leaders and managers to be prepared to act on data analysis and to decide whether data science applications are appropriate tools for their businesses or organizations. The course is also well suited for business operations specialists to understand the building blocks of basic data visualization.
Data Science for Business moves beyond the spreadsheet and provides a hands-on approach for demystifying the data science ecosystem and making you a more conscientious consumer of information. Starting with the questions you need to ask when using data for decision-making, this course will help you know when to trust your data and how to interpret the results. By the end of the course, you should understand how to create a data-driven framework for your organization or yourself; develop hypotheses and insights from visualization; identify data mistakes or missing components; and, speak the language of data science across themes such as forecasting, linear regressions, and machine learning to better lead your team to long-term success. You will learn how to create a compelling story that uses proven, collected data to make core business decisions, and explore coding environments such as R and visualization software.
Related Courses
Credential of Readiness (CORe)
Designed to help you achieve fluency in the language of business, CORe is a business fundamentals program that combines Business Analytics, Economics for Managers, and Financial Accounting with a final exam.
Apply by May 15$2,500Credential
