Please see the attached course syllabus.  Thanks!

TBA.

Course grades will be calculated using points from each project. Our goal this term is to complete 6 projects. Each of the projects will have a few components, with different requirements, deadlines, and point assignments. Also, each of the 6 projects will have a peer review component.

The project details may change during the course of the term. The possible projects for Spring 2019 include: “Retirement Planning” from Professor Ken Baker of Dartmouth, “Valuation of SimplexCo and ComplexCo Gold Mines” from Professor David Luenberger of Stanford, “Airlines Revenue Models” from Professor Samuel E. Bodily of Virginia, “Pro Forma Financial Forecasting” by Professor Paul M. Healy and Professor Krishna G. Palepu at Harvard Business School.

The materials for the course will be:

1. Laptop/Excel. You must have and bring a Windows-based laptop to class that has Excel. Apple will not work, since you cannot run macros in Mac OS.

2. You will need simulation software. You have two available: 

a. Simtools by Roger Myerson, Nobel Laureate of Economics of 2007. This is an older simulation package developed by Nobel Laureate Roger Myerson.

b. Crystal Ball. You can download a 30-day trial from Oracle.

3. Textbooks

• Required for each group of four participants: “Introduction to Management Science, 6th edition”, by Hillier and Hillier, McGraw-Hill, 2018. This is the textbook covering the basics of modelling as well as the basics of the prerequisite tools Analytic Solver. Students should read, in particular, Chapters 4, 12, and 13 of this book.

• “Practical Management Science, Sixth Edition”, by Wayne L. Winston and S. Christian Albright, Cengage, 2017.

• “Spreadsheet Modeling and Applications”, by Albright and Winston, Thomson/Duxbury Press 2005. This is the textbook covering the basics of modelling as well as the basics of the prerequisite tools Solver and @Risk. Students should read Chapters 3 and 9 of this book before Sessions 3 and 5, respectively.

• Required for each group of four participants: “Management Science: The Art of Modeling with Spreadsheets, Fourth Edition”, by Kenneth R. Baker, Stephen G. Powell, Wiley, 2014. This is the pedagogically sound textbook covering the seminal models including the Retirement Planning Models and Airlines Revenue Models.

• “VBA for modelers”, by Christian Albright, Second Edition, Palisade 2006. This textbook provides a step-by-step guide to using VBA to build decision support systems with Excel.

• “Introduction to Probability, Second Edition” by Joseph K. Blitzstein and Jessica Hwang, Chapman and Hall/CRC, 2019. ISBN: 9781138369917. The book is highly recommended for audience without prior exposure to probability and statistics.