Excel For Decision Making Under Uncertainty Course

in collaboration with Dr. Isaac Gottlieb

You will master the skills that Dr. Gottlieb teaches his MBA students in this course without having to attend a pricey institution. Learn how to use Excel tools to make business decisions under ambiguity, such as:

Forecasting using Decision Trees and Monte Carlo simulations, as well as the Data Analysis toolpack.

You’ll look at real-world business case studies, use Excel features to help you make judgments, and learn how to use Excel to evaluate data and make decisions.

Each session’s practice activities urge you to fine-tune what you’ve learned.

When you’re completed, we’ll email you a Certificate of Completion to use on your resume.

This course is suitable for executives or analysts who wish to develop or refresh their abilities, as well as students at all levels of business school.

Who is instructing the course?

Columbia University awarded Dr. Isaac Gottlieb a PhD in Management Engineering. He is a clinical professor at Temple University’s Fox Business School and has over 15 years of industry experience.

For 2014-2016, he was named a Microsoft Excel Most Valuable Professional (MVP).

Dr. Gottlieb has taught Excel to over 30,000 MBA, executive MBA, MS, PhD, and undergraduate students at Columbia, NYU, Temple, and other colleges over the last 15 years. He has given countless corporate lectures in the United States and throughout the world.

Next Generation Excel: Modeling in Excel for Analysts and MBAs is another his book.

Prerequisites for this course

The course is designed for students of all ability levels and does not require any prior knowledge other than basic Excel abilities. It covers statistics, probability, finance, and accounting – but only at a beginner level.

Course Outline

There are three sessions in the course: simulations, decision trees, and forecasting. You can take them in whatever sequence you like. Each lesson contains activities based on real-world business problems.
Simulations

You will discover how to use Monte Carlo Simulations in Excel. This section will demonstrate how to produce probabilistic, uncertain, or dangerous circumstances and simulate the likely outcome hundreds or thousands of times, resulting in the creation of a risk profile for an investment, a budget, or a business strategy.

A Business Plan Budget’s Risk Profile

Trees of Decision

You’ll learn how to use a free third-party add-in to “build” decision trees in Excel. Instead of utilizing manual procedures, you will be able to use Excel to design multi-stage decision trees that will allow you to examine and explain the different outcomes of your decision-making process.

Forecasting a Decision Tree in Excel

The Forecasting module will guide you through several tools, including the Data Analysis toolpack.

Excel will allow you to utilize Moving Averages, Exponential Smoothing, Trends, Regressions, and Multi Regressions.

Forecasting using Excel

View an Example Video from the Course