AvantGarde

Data Scientist- Both CNBC and The Wall Street Journal call it the sexiest job of the 21st century, but no one really knows what they do or what they work on. In fact there is a joke going around which goes something like this “everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it..”

The MBA program at IIT Kanpur has always been a pioneer in the field of management education since its inception. Recognizing the increasingly important role that big data and analytics play in business, we have restructured our entire curriculum to give due importance to Statistical Modelling and Quantitative techniques. Out of this restructuring was born Vishleshan- the analytics club of our program. Vishleshan conducts seminars and workshops to educate students about the current happenings in the field of analytics and also to inform them of upcoming opportunities. As a part of their activities the people at Vishleshan have graciously agreed to contribute to this edition of Avant Garde which will focus entirely on analytics.

Looking at the articles being published in this issue, we have Saurabh Prasad of MBA 2013-2015 giving us an insight into the analytical framework used in business decision making.
This is followed by an article by Pratha Pareek of MBA 2013-2015 who shares her opinions on the impact of analytics in the advertising world.
Finally we have Varun Sharma of MBA 2013-2015 demonstrating how analytics can be used in business consulting by using the ‘word cloud” to deconstruct a speech made by the Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi of the BJP .

The issue also covers a special feature of the business quiz focusing on analytics to brush up your knowledge of the sector.
We hope that you like this edition of Avant Garde. Your comments, criticism and appreciation is awaited.
You can post your comments on the articles in the Add Comment section.
We would like to end by saying that this will be the last issue of Avant Garde for this semester. We promise to be back next semester with even better editions.

Till then we wish you all a happy reading and a great summer ahead.
Cheers.