Programming and Big Data

The aim of this course is to provide students with basic skills in programming in order to to be able to handle large databases in the fields of commerce, logistics, mass consumption, consumer preferences and others. The specific learning objectives include: designing and creating a database; storing, retrieving and analyzing relevant data from the corresponding databases, and; interpreting and presenting results and making recommendations. This is a hands-on course where students use relevant programming and data processing tools and apply them to large datasets from the fields of international business and marketing.

The course will be structured around learning how to use four principal tools: Linux open source operating system, Python Programming Language, R programming language used for statistical computations, data analysis and graphical representations of data, and MySQL relational database management system used in data warehousing, e-commerce, and web databases. More specifically, the course covers the following topics:

1.The importance of developing programming skills for business data analysis.
2. Large data sets in international business and marketing.
3.Introduction to Linux. Command Line Operators.Text editors. User environments.
4. Introduction to Python.
5. Introduction to R. Variables and data types. Inbuilt functions. Data frame. Plotting.
6. Introduction to MySQL. Designing Databases. Basic SQL. Database Structure. Doing Advanced Queries. Introduction to PHP and MySQL. MySQL with R.