DBBA: Data-driven Business and Behaviour Analytics

Welcome to Data-driven Business and Behaviour Analytics

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this course, you should be able to: 

1. Critically analyse and explain human behaviour based on empirical observations.
2. Apply a range of mathematical and computational modelling techniques to human-related data and decide which one is the most appropriate for a specific task.
3. Model and simulate realistic social systems with independent or interacting individuals.
4. Discuss the legal and ethical implications of working with human-related data.
5. Present (written/oral) highly interdisciplinary work in an understandable and comprehensive manner to people with different backgrounds.

The course will be delivered through a combination of lectures and tutorials; students will be expected to complete both pencil-and-paper and programming-based exercises on their own time as well as during tutorials. Students will complete two projects to assess their practical and writing skills, and also sit an exam.  

The topics in the course will be covered in two interconnected sections, with indicative topics listed below:  

1) Social Networks  
* Introduction to network science  
* Different types of social networks  
* Metrics and communities  
* Tools for network analysis  
* Financial networks 

2) Agent-based modelling  
* Rational and biased agents  
* Modelling decision making with agents  
* Calibration and validation of agent-based models  
* Case studies in business, finance, and economics 

Students will develop their critical thinking and problem-solving skills during tutorials. Some tutorials will involve pencil-and-paper exercises where students solve increasingly difficult problems (presented in a way similar to that of the exam) on network science, and mathematical modelling of human behaviour. In others, students will work on real-world datasets and will be guided through the whole process of modelling human behaviour from a practical point of view, applying the notions learned during classes. The skills here acquired will be then assessed during the courseworks, which will be similar to what covered in the tutorials.