Michael Brydon, BEng, MEng, PhD
Beedie School of Business
Simon Fraser University
The following is a consolidated list of multimedia tutorials used to support my courses in basic analytics. The purpose of this page is to expose the links to anyone who may want to use the content. The obvious caveat is that this is not the full course—the context for each lesson (learning objectives, quizzes, data sets, assignments, class slides) is embedded within the closed course management system at SFU.
By way of background: My approach in the course is to teach analytic concepts using hands-on exercises. One way to help students differentiate between high-level concepts and tool-specific techniques is to have them do the same task using multiple tools. Students are asked to do t-tests, regression, basic plots, and so on using SAS Enterprise Guide, Excel, and R or Python. By doing this, and comparing and contrasting the approaches, they gain a better understanding of the underlying essence of analytic techniques.
| Sample data files used in demonstrations |
|---|
| Bank employee salary data (Excel or CSV) (t-tests, contingency tables) |
| Concrete strength data (regression) |
| Patent data (competely made-up) (data mining) |
| Hockey salary data (data mining) |
| New/used car model (Monte Carlo simulation) |
| Video game sales (assignments) |