Optimization

Trevor Hardy of the Canadian Football League -- Canada's counterpart to the NFL -- faced the task of scheduling 18 games for nine clubs throughout the 20-week season, balancing competing priorities for revenue, TV ratings, or player time -- while meeting a wide range of constraints, from times of day for fans in four time zones to traditional Labor Day rivalry match-ups.  Here's how he used optimization in Microsoft Excel to create significantly better schedules than the league had been able to create by hand.

What do MBA students need to learn about analytics?  Here are five techniques relevant for their future work.