The University of Texas at Dallas

School of Management

MIS 6324 Syam Menon

BI Software and Techniques Autumn 2010
Syllabus

Office SOM 3.421

Phone (972) 883–4779
E-mail syam@utdallas.edu

Class Hours Section 501: Mondays & Wednesdays, 5:30 p.m. – 6:45 p.m. (SOM 2.115)
Section 502: Mondays, 7:00 p.m. – 9:45 p.m. (SOM 2.115)
Office Hours Wednesdays, 7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Thursdays, 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m., and by appointment

Prerequisites MIS 6326. Some background in probability and statistics will be helpful.

Outline Most organizations are data rich and information poor. For instance, Walmart captured
20 million transactions per day in 2003. The rate at which data has been accumulating
has only increased since, with newer sources like social networks and RFID. These large
volumes of data potentially could reveal useful information about the target of interest —
customers, in most business contexts. The primary objective of this course is to introduce
you to various techniques available to extract useful information (business intelligence) from
the large volumes of data an organization might possess. At the end of the semester, you will
not only appreciate the substantial opportunities that exist in the business intelligence realm,
but also learn techniques that will allow you to exploit these opportunities. The course will
cover general concepts in the BI field, along with many popular BI techniques like association
rules, decision trees, neural networks, classification and clustering. The focus will be on how
the techniques are to be used, and the details of the methodologies will be covered only to
the extent necessary to understand when and how each technique can be used. Students will
also gain experience using BI/DM software. We will focus on the use of XLMiner, which is
a convenient add-on to MS-Excel, which you are comfortable with. We will also work with
SAS Enterprise Miner towards the latter part of the course.

Learning → To gain a general understanding of business intelligence / data mining, and to appreciate
Objectives the data rich environment of today’s global economy.
→ To gain a practical understanding of many key methods integral to data mining.
→ To gain an understanding of when to use which technique.
→ To become aware of some current trends in the use of BI.
→ To gain the intellectual capital required to provide business analytics services.

Recommended 1) Data Mining Techniques: For Marketing, Sales, and Customer Relationship Management,
Books 2e, by Michael Berry and Gordon Linoff.
Wiley, ISBN-10: 0471470643, ISBN-13: 978-0471470649
2) Data Mining for Business Intelligence: Concepts, techniques, and applications in Microsoft
Office Excel with XLMiner, by Galit Shmueli, Nitin Patel, Peter Bruce.
Wiley, ISBN-10: 0470084855, ISBN-13: 978-0470084854

Additional Various additional articles will be posted each week. Some of these articles will be required
Reading class presentations by student groups.

Groups This class involves many group projects and presentations. Groups should comprise 3-5
students, and should be formed as soon as possible. Once formed, altering the groups will
not be possible except in very special circumstances.
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Projects There are three group projects assigned over the course of the semester. Each project will be
worth 10% of the final grade.

Examinations Two closed-book, closed-notes examinations will be given in class; each will be worth 25%
of the final grade. Tentatively, the first will be on October 18, 2010, while the second will
be on December 13, 2010.
Term Paper 15% of the final grade will be determined by your performance on a group term paper. The
primary objective of the term paper is to encourage you to explore and think about potential
applications of the techniques you will learn in this class. For those of you who are working,
please consider working on projects that could be beneficial to your company. For those of you
who are not working, you may choose a BI application or method that is relevant to this class.
Study the topic in detail and write-up a report. Your report will consist of a brief introduction
of the application you picked, an explanation of the key underlying technology, identifying the
industries/firms that are using the technology, your analysis of the application in the industry,
problems existing in the industry using the technology and your recommendation of solutions.
While evaluating these reports, I will pay particular attention to the quality of your analysis
and the nature of answers you provided.
A 1-page proposal is due on or before November 01, 2010 and must be approved by me;
failure to submit a proposal in time will result in a grade of zero for the paper.
The final paper is due on or before December 06, 2010. The paper should be in 12-point
font, double-spaced, and between 10-12 pages in length. It should include a minimum of five
appropriate references and citations (Wikipedia is not an appropriate research source). A
professional paper in terms of style and mechanics (spelling, etc.) is expected. The grade
for the project will be determined primarily on (i) the relevance of the topic, (ii) the quality
and originality of the ideas and the extent of analysis presented, (iii) evidence to support (iv)
the organization and presentation, and (v) other factors (input from Turnitin, professionalism,
grammar, spelling, proper referencing, etc.) Selected groups will be asked to present their paper
on December 01 and December 06, 2010.

Class Partic- 5% of the final grade will be based on class participation. This has multiple components.
ipation Attendance, while not mandatory is very likely to affect your performance in class. If you
have to miss a lecture, please make arrangements with other students to ensure that you are up-
to-date. There will be additional readings assigned throughout the semester. Student groups
are expected to make 20-minute presentations of many of these readings. These presentations
will form an important part of the class participation grade. Another important component is
the actual participation itself — students should discuss the assigned readings both in class,
and on the discussion board in eLearning. Regular, useful participation is encouraged.

Grades The default schedule for grade assignment is: (≥ 90%) ⇒ A, (≥ 87.5% & < 90%) ⇒ A−, (≥
85% & < 87.5%) ⇒ B+, (≥ 80% & < 85%) ⇒ B, (≥ 77.5% & < 80%) ⇒ B−, (≥ 75% & <
77.5%) ⇒ C+, (≥ 65% & < 75%) ⇒ C, (< 65%) ⇒ F . The final cut-offs may be adjusted
downward at the end of the semester based on the degree of difficulty of the graded material.

Comments You are responsible for any announcements made in class (including alterations to the schedule).
You are also responsible for material distributed in class and through eLearning.
Academic dishonesty will result in disciplinary proceedings as noted in the student catalog at
http://www.utdallas.edu/dept/graddean/CAT2006/appendices/Appendix1.htm
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Tentative Course Outline

(Some of the latter topics might change)

Section
Week Date 501 502 Material Due
01 23-Aug-10 overview overview
25-Aug-10 Introduction I
02 30-Aug-10 Introduction I, II Introduction I, II
01-Sep-10 Introduction II
03 06-Sep-10 LABOR DAY
08-Sep-10 DM Process, Association
Rules
04 13-Sep-10 DM Process, Association DM Process, Association
Rules Rules
15-Sep-10 Segmentation, Clustering
05 20-Sep-10 Segmentation, Clustering Segmentation, Clustering
22-Sep-10 Classification I
06 27-Sep-10 Classification I Classification I Project 1
29-Sep-10 Classification II
07 04-Oct-10 Classification II Classification II
06-Oct-10 Genetic Algorithms
08 11-Oct-10 Genetic Algorithms Genetic Algorithms; Re- Project 2
view
13-Oct-10 Review
09 18-Oct-10 EXAM I
20-Oct-10 KNN and Collaborative
Filtering
10 25-Oct-10 KNN and Collaborative KNN and Collaborative
Filtering Filtering
13-Oct-10 Other BI/DM tools
11 01-Nov-10 Other BI/DM tools Other BI/DM tools
03-Nov-10 Web Mining
12 08-Nov-10 Web Mining Web Mining
10-Nov-10 CRM
13 15-Nov-10 CRM CRM Project 3
17-Nov-10 Personalization
14 22-Nov-10 Personalization Personalization
24-Nov-10 Miscellaneous Topics
15 29-Nov-10 Miscellaneous Topics Miscellaneous Topics
01-Dec-10 Presentations
16 06-Dec-10 Presentations Presentations Term Paper
08-Dec-10 READING DAY
17 13-Dec-10 EXAM II