Valeria Cortez

Former blog contributor

Course: MSc Business Analytics

From: Bolivia

Hi there! My name is Valeria and I’m a MSc student in Business Analytics at Imperial College. I’m passionate about data discovery via beautiful visualisations and analytics … but I also love dancing, running and exploring new cuisines. More on: www.valeria.io

What is Data Spark and why you should take part

MSc Business Analytics

Data Spark is a student placement scheme at Imperial designed to uncover insights and solve real-world business problems. It lasts around 6 weeks and you’re able to work with students from different study programs. Throughout this journey, you get great advice from academic and industry mentors.

Having finalised the program last week, I wanted to share what I enjoyed the most:

Applying new skills

One of my favourite parts of this program was that I was able to apply several skills learned during my current study program (MSc Business Analytics). I was able to run different models, work on network analysis and and apply several visualisation techniques.

Launching a start-up at Imperial

MSc Business Analytics

Earlier this year, I met Christian, a student of Service at The Royal College of Art. What it started as a conversation of business ideas, is now becoming a start-up.

We’re launching GoalBowl. This is a breakfast mix subscription, tailor-made to your personal health and wellbeing goals. We match healthy ingredients to your goals based on their key nutrients and health benefits. This results in a tasty bowl made specially for you.

We’re working following the lean start-up approach. We make sure that we work close to customers and their needs. With this in mind and with the support of the Enterprise lab at Imperial, we set our first booth at Sherfield building.

Three things I learned from my Facebook data

MSc Business Analytics

I recently used a R script from Keith McNulty to analyse my Facebook data. I was curious to know how much I had been posting for the past 10 years, but I also wanted to know much information Facebook had about me.

I was able to download over 4,000 days of data and more than 30,000 posts. These posts were mine, but also from friends that were posting on my timeline.

In the process, I learned these three points:

1. I have 1000’s of posts per year

I remember when I initially joined Facebook, my friends I would basically communicate and organise everything by posting publicly on our walls (no sense of privacy!).

Dad, people teach online for free – learning more with online videos

MSc Business Analytics

One of my learning rituals is to look for online videos to better understand the concepts that I’ve covered in class.

Lectures nowadays are taught with slides. This often lead us to go through mathematical formulas and other complicated concepts at a quicker speed than our brain (at least mine) can handle. Moreover, you might still need to some ‘refresh’ on topics you’ve learned time ago. You may also need to learn from scratch topics you might had not seen before.

I started by undergraduate degree back in 2009 when MOOC courses and online learning were in their early days. Looking for information came usually in written form.

Visiting Imperial’s neighbours

MSc Business Analytics

We can all agree that Imperial has great neighbours. On the same street, you find some of the most stunning museums of London: Natural History Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum and Science Museum, all of which are free to enter.

Natural History Museum

If you love nature, animals and science, you cannot miss the Natural History Museum. You’ll be impressed viewing their dinosaurs or experiencing an earthquake simulation in a Japanese store.

Last Friday after class, I visited the NHM as it was hosting a special evening event about the Blue Planet II TV show. I’m a huge fan of this BBC series that manages to capture the wildlife in the planet’s oceans with the latest technologies and innovative filming methods.

The learning toolbox for MSc Business Analytics

MSc Business Analytics

The MSc in Business analytics is an intense year of rigorous technical and quantitative training. It prepares students to solve business problems using a variety of statistical, operations research and machine learning techniques.

What you learn in class is usually just a small part of what you end up doing in group projects and homework. There is a huge amount of good resources you can use to learn new material or enhance your knowledge in a topic.

In this blog, I wanted to share the most useful sources I found in case you’re planning to pursue this program at Imperial.

Before you start the program: the basics

Statistics and probability

Start by revising your math skills in statistics and probability.

Learn more about life at Imperial

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