Introduction to the Analytics Mindset and Skillset

Description

This class introduces the analytics mindset and the basic skills accountants use to work with data. Understanding the role of analytics is important because accountants increasingly use data to answer questions, identify patterns, and support decisions.

Motivation

How can data help accountants answer questions?

Review

This class establishes the foundation for the course by introducing the relationship between accounting questions, data, analysis, and decisions. The concepts introduced here provide a framework for understanding the analytical tools and cases used throughout the course.

Preparation

• There is no required preparation for this class.

Class plan

• We will introduce and discuss the course requirements and expectations, using the syllabus as our guide.
• We will introduce the analytic mindset and discuss how it applies to accounting data analytics.
• We will undertake short in-class exercises to introduce our first two topics, data quality and the Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) process.

Topics

• Accounting analytics
• ETL
• Data quality

Concepts

• Analytical mindset
• Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL)
• Data quality