Introducing the Udacity Predictive Analytics for Business NanoDegree!

[PatrickN]

Are you interested in predictive analytics, but are not a statistician?

Do you love Alteryx, but feel you cannot take advantage of the predictive tools?

Are you overwhelmed by the number of predictive methodologies, but not sure which approach is applicable to your problem?

Would you like to be able to answer questions such as:

Should we replenish the inventory of orange tennis balls with yellow tennis balls in our largest store? How many service representatives should I hire to support a new client? Which customers should receive a particular promotional circular? Should we suspend the provision of credit for a particular customer? How can I predict yearly revenue based on past performance? Do we need to borrow to meet our short-term financial obligations or can we rely on our expected revenue flow?

Should we change our store hours of operation? Can we improve how we staff our stores to provide better customer service? Can we increase profits through minor changes in our pricing? How does a price change impact our bottom line? Can we place our stores into manageable groups for merchandising, layout planning and implementation? What seasonal merchandise should be sent to each store, and when?

Alteryx has joined forces with Udacity to develop a curriculum focused on the business user who is interested in leveraging predictive analytics to answer business questions, but does not have the time or resources to take a statistics-heavy degree program. The Nanodegree consists of seven courses focused on selecting the right methodology, data preparation, and data visualization as well as four courses that will equip you to use predictive analytics to answer your business problems.

Interested?

Check out our registration page at: www.alteryx.com/predictive-training to get started.

[Atabarezz]

Good idea...

a version for BI and Prescriptive would be awesome as well... looking forward to it...

[Aguisande]

This course will bring all people interested in Predictive Analytics, the tools to fully immerse into it.

Its clear, easy to follow and the platform works great. Very good support from the coaches & mentors too!

[Aguisande]

The program is now live!

Check this URL: http://blog.udacity.com/2016/10/open-enrollment-udacity-predictive-analytics-business-nanodegree-pro...

I'm honored to be one of the mentors too !

[PatrickN]

You can enroll via credit card at: http://www.udacity.com/alteryx

[gnans19]

Graduated from Predictive Analytics Nanodegree. Great Course!

[Aguisande]

 Congratulations @gnans19!

How was your overall experience?

Maybe your feedback encourage others to enroll too!

[SeanAdams]

Hi @PatrickN,

Firstly - congratulations on this course - this is a fantastic way to spread the word about Alterxy.

While $1000 or so may not be a big investment for folks in the US (given the state of education debt in the US, I'm not sure how many families have $1000 lying around in the US right now) - for the 2.5 Billion folks in the world in the countries that are going to be the biggest drivers of technology delivery in the next few years (India and China, with Malaysia; Indonesia; etc following), $1000 is a very substantial chunk of a year's salary for folk in these countries.   I checked the price this evening here in India, and the cost is RS 58 000 (around $840) which is also around the cost of a brand-new motorcycle which would be the main form of transport for a family of an IT professional in many cities in India.   Now - although the course blurb suggests that this would be a great way to secure your next job, this cost is prohibitive for anyone in countries other than the richest nations, and it certainly is out of the question for anyone in India or China who is seeking new work in this field.

I guess the question is the strategic objective of this Nano-degree program for Alteryx:

If, similar to Microsoft in the late 90s, Alteryx wants to win the Land-grab for space in the BI pantheon over the next few years - it would make sense to drop the cost of this training substantially to make this possible for a very broad segment of the population.   This would achieve to wins: It would increase the available Alteryx skills (making this a better tool choice for employers); and it would increase the advocacy from employees (who are now vested in their skills).    Additionally - the more people who are able to certify using Alteryx, the more Alteryx becomes the definitional standard that people use to compare every other platform to - again, skewing future sales in Alteryx's direction.

Given the size of the IT skills market in India; China; and other similar economies (e.g. Bengaluru in India is often stated as being the 2nd largest IT center in the world after Silicon Valley - and more new IT startups happen here than in NYC every year) - I think that Alteryx would do well to embrace these markets by bringing the cost of certifications and Nano-degrees, and learning-licenses to a price-point where they can be adopted by the hundreds of millions of IT practitioners who are actively seeking skills and certification options to remain relevant (closer to the $80 price point for India would be the right range).

As always - very happy to talk through this with the team if that would be helpful.

Best regards

Sean

cc: @JoeM, @BrianO, @JulieH, @MattD

[PatrickN]

Hi @SeanAdams,

Thank you for your message - we appreciate your insights and feedback.  While I may not be able to address the points in your comment, I do hope I am able to clarify some of the available options for learning Alteryx and/or predictive concepts.

The Nanodegree program is offered entirely by Udacity and they set the global prices.  Alteryx partnered with Udacity as there is a need for more advanced problem solving skills in the market and we wanted to help address the gap.  Your points are great and have been passed on to Udacity - you may receive an email from the Udacity program manager, Sam Nelson, to discuss in more detail.

All of the courses in the Nanodegree are available at Udacity.com for free.  Therefore, anyone who wishes to learn the concepts may do so by watching the courses online.  A student may go to https://www.udacity.com/course/predictive-analytics-for-business--nd008, and watch the course content for each course by clicking on the 'supporting courses' links in the program syllabus.  Hopefully, this would allow people without funding to learn the material.  The cost of the Nanodegree covers mentoring, access to other students, project feedback, and some additional content, as well as educational licenses for Alteryx and Tableau.  Udacity does offer a monthly program for the Nanodegree at a rate of ~$200/month.  The monthly program is currently used by many students in India, China and other parts of the world as an option.

The Nanodegree is intended to teach some fundamentals of predictive analytics. As part of the Nanodegree, students learn the basics of Alteryx and how to solve business problems with predictive analytics using Alteryx.  However, people who seek to learn Alteryx may do so using many of the free resources available on the training section of the community, as well as the self-paced training that is currently available on Alteryx.com (soon to be moved to the community).  We are currently exploring options for customer certifications on the Alteryx platform as the Nanodegree is a certification around predictive concepts and not an Alteryx certification.

Lastly, we are always looking to improve the learning experience and will use your input as we build out the training and certifications available to the Alteryx community.  We appreciate your offer to be part of a conversation and will reach out to you at an appropriate time.  If you have any additional thoughts, please let us know!

Thank you,

Patrick

[SeanAdams]

Hi @PatrickN,

Since we last spoke, I've registered for the NanoDegree, and am currently waiting for results of the first assignment.   I will also reach out to the contact you mentioned (Sam N) to discuss the idea of specific pricing for the lower-income markets.

Not sure what other feedback you've received on the NanoDegree, but 2 weeks in my initial impression is that it's well organised, the team is very proactive, and it's looking positive so-far.

Thanks Patrick

Sean

[SeanAdams]

Hey @PatrickN - just wanted to say thank you - graduated from the nano-degree yesterday.

Very worthwhile course - it was specifically useful for taking away the fear of new tools that you don't understand and giving a real opportunity to practice with them.   The predictive tools can be very rough, they tend to throw error messages that are difficult to interpret and so they can be a bit unapproachable - and a course like this really helps!

Thanks @PatrickN  & the full team that worked on this (if I'm not mistaken @BenBu also had a starring role?)

[Ozzy_Campos]

I'll double-vouch for the nanodegree course, I finished it in November '17.  It was very well-done, got to the point and provided very useful, important information.  It took me a while to get used to Alteryx, but once I did I can do things way faster then in R and visualize the workflow.  Plus, the projects in the course were almost exactly the same as I've been doing as a business analyst.  And I should say that they changed the name to "Business Analyst" and incorporated more SQL and Tableau and a few other topics, so it's not only an Alteryx or prediction modeling course, although both play a large role.  The predictive analytics sections in clustering and classification were very high quality and easily understood (at least compared to when I covered these topics from a science perspective and using R, and had significant trouble trying to follow along), I can tell a lot of thought was put into explaining these topics for the audience.  

I might suggest some sort of follow-on communication between Alteryx-partners and graduates of the nanodegree course, that would be an excellent start for finding people that are relatively-well-versed in both using the software and analysis.  Udacity has a dedicated job board for graduates of nano-degrees, but there aren't business analyst jobs on the board...I feel like the course is overlooked by a lot of companies that could benefit, but don't actually know the quality of the Business Analyst degree. 

[aweiner]

Hello all,

I'm reviving this thread because it appears that Udacity has made changes to this program. They took the Data Wrangling class from the nanodegree out of the Udacity catalog and removed the ability to register for it as a standalone class. From PatrickN above:

"All of the courses in the Nanodegree are available at Udacity.com for free.  Therefore, anyone who wishes to learn the concepts may do so by watching the courses online.  A student may go to https://www.udacity.com/course/predictive-analytics-for-business--nd008, and watch the course content for each course by clicking on the 'supporting courses' links in the program syllabus."

Per Udacity, this is no longer the case. They said I have to buy the whole nanodegree program to access that class- it isn't available as a standalone either free or paid. I want to take that data wrangling class without going through the whole program. Can someone from the Alteryx crew help me access the class please?