Columbia Business School Python | Online Certificate Program

Round 1

The deadline for this round has passed

US$208 early registration benefit

Round 2

US$2,392 / program fee

Application Deadline

Python: An Effective Language Of Business

It is sometimes argued that people in business-oriented roles don’t need to know technical skills since they can outsource programming to a development team, but this is an outdated and dangerous way of thinking. Leaders and managers, including those with MBAs, don’t need to be taught to be full-blown programmers, but they need to learn how technical concepts apply to business uses.

Python is designed to be easy to read while still being very powerful, which makes it a great language for beginners to learn. It’s the fastest-growing programming language out there and is becoming an integral part of many professions, from finance and insurance to technology, healthcare, retail, and ecommerce. Consider these facts:

Decorative image relating to text that follows

Despite a slump due to the pandemic, job postings for managers with python skills have gone up by 25% in 2020 according to EMSI data.

(Source: Emsi employment data)

According to a Bloomberg report, the language Citigroup wants its incoming investment bank analysts to know is Python.

(Source: Bloomberg report)

"There are two kinds of people: those who understand technology and those who don’t. People who understand technology can design and control the very structure of the world around them. People who don’t understand it are controlled by those who do."

- Mattan Griffel, Faculty Co-Director; Adjunct Assistant Professor of Business at Columbia Business School

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Key Takeaways

Learn the fundamentals of coding in Python with a focus on practical business applications
Read and write scripts
Build the capacity to organize and interpret data that extends far beyond Excel’s capabilities
Learn how to combine multiple data sources for better insights
Learn to communicate effectively with programmers whether you hire, manage, or collaborate with them
Explore the practical applications of web scraping and APIs

Who Is This Program For?

Designed for experienced professionals interested in learning practical coding skills to leverage the massive data stream their company already generates or data that they would like to collect, this program offers valuable instruction in the most popular and fastest-growing programming language. Python can help any professional solve business problems, plan for the future, and communicate more fluently with coders and developers. No prior coding experience is required. It is best suited for professionals in the following roles:

Senior Managers and Executives
Ideal for senior management with more than 10 years of experience in data-saturated industries such as IT, healthcare, and banking and financial services, who seek to establish an artificial intelligence or machine learning roadmap for their organization. Participants seek to gain a practical understanding of Python and wish to interact in more meaningful ways with data scientists and analysts by sharing the language of Python. Representative roles include:

Chief Executive Officer
Chief Operating Officer
Chief Financial Officer
Chief Security Officer

Director
Managing Director
Head of Finance
Head of Marketing

Head of Analytics
Head of Strategy
President
Vice President

Risk Managers, Traders, & Bankers
Ideal for professionals with 6-20+ years in the financial services industry who are interested in finance-related applications of Python such as forecasting and algorithmic trading, allowing them to react swiftly to market changes. Likely participants hold a business, finance, or statistics degree and want to be armed with the latest technological tools to gain or maintain a competitive edge. Representative roles include:

Risk Manager
Trader
Portfolio Manager

Compliance Manager
Investment Banker

Investment Accounting Manager
FP&A Manager

Mid- to Senior-Level Technology Managers
Ideal for professionals with 11-20 years of experience who are tasked with creating a technology strategy for their organization as well as building and deploying technology to serve their enterprise. Drawing from many industries, participants often work in the tech field. They collaborate with colleagues who are fluent in multiple programming languages and would like to improve their communications with developers. They seek a foundation for a future in AI or machine learning and want to add a popular language to their skillset. Representative roles include:

Chief Technology Officer
Technology Director
Engineering Director

Product Manager
Product Director

Project Manager
IT Manager

Analysts
Ideal for junior professionals with 1-5 years of experience working as an analyst or for mid-career analysts with 5-15 years of experience. Working in any industry, analyst participants often are already fluent in some programming languages (such as R, SQL, or VBA). They analyze data, produce reports, and build dashboards for their organizations. They seek to advance from data to big data and want to keep pace with trends in the swiftly evolving data science ecosystem. Representative roles include:

Data Analyst
Data Scientist

Analytics Manager
Senior Manager, Data and Analytics

Analytics Director
Vice President of Analytics

Consultants
Ideal for professionals with 6-20+ years of experience in the consulting industry who develop strategies for clients’ specific business challenges. Looking to base solutions on the latest data and technology advancements, participants seek to leverage Python’s capabilities to solve business problems, progressing beyond MS Excel to create reports, dashboards, and models for their clients. Representative roles include:

Consultant
Principal Consultant

Business Consultant
Consulting Partner

Operations Advisor
Consulting Director

Learning Journey

Python for Managers (Online) will help you build the capacity to organize large volumes of data and combine data from disparate sources, so you can make better business decisions.

Program Topics

The goal of this curriculum is to present a hybrid of Python fundamentals and hands-on practice in the application of Python. You will learn how to connect to APIs, scrape data from websites, and access and analyze large volumes of data efficiently and effectively.

Introduction:

Welcome to the Program and Orientation

As you begin your exploration of Python’s capabilities, you will start by setting up your development environment.

Week 1:

Python Fundamentals Part 1

You will review the evolution and purpose of Python, gain an understanding of your development environment, customize your command line, practice command line prompts, start building a mental map of Python concepts, and practice coding with basic Python scripts.

Week 2:

Python Fundamentals Part 2

In this module, you will work with If statements, Else and Elif statements, logic structures, lists, and For loops.

Week 3:

Python Fundamentals Part 3

You will gain an understanding of the role of dictionaries, functions, and import, practice writing code for dictionaries and functions, and refactor code for efficiency and simplicity.

Week 4:

Intro to Pandas in Python

In this module, you will be introduced to data in Python, review Jupyter, work on data without Pandas, explore Panda series data frames, understand columns and rows, and read data.

Week 5:

Analyzing Data with Python

You will filter data, edit data frames, understand how duplicated and missing values impact data hygiene, gain an introduction to combining data, and construct full orders in a case study of New York restaurants.

Week 6:

APIs and Web Scraping with Python

In this module, you will explore examples of APIs, use Python to connect to an API, develop an understanding of HTML, and learn how to use web scrapers in Python to pull information from a page.

Week 7:

Applying APIs and Web Scraping

Skills you will master in this module include loading nutrition data, scraping the data, joining it all together, connecting to Weather API, creating a Weather data frame, and aggregating data.

Week 8:

Tying It Together

Your culminating module focuses on advanced data aggregation, aggregating with time, making pretty plots, and your final project.

Introduction:

Welcome to the Program and Orientation

As you begin your exploration of Python’s capabilities, you will start by setting up your development environment.

Week 5:

Analyzing Data with Python

Week 1:

Python Fundamentals Part 1

Week 6:

APIs and Web Scraping with Python

In this module, you will explore examples of APIs, use Python to connect to an API, develop an understanding of HTML, and learn how to use web scrapers in Python to pull information from a page.

Week 2:

Python Fundamentals Part 2

In this module, you will work with If statements, Else and Elif statements, logic structures, lists, and For loops.

Week 7:

Applying APIs and Web Scraping

Skills you will master in this module include loading nutrition data, scraping the data, joining it all together, connecting to Weather API, creating a Weather data frame, and aggregating data.

Week 3:

Python Fundamentals Part 3

You will gain an understanding of the role of dictionaries, functions, and import, practice writing code for dictionaries and functions, and refactor code for efficiency and simplicity.

Week 8:

Tying It Together

Your culminating module focuses on advanced data aggregation, aggregating with time, making pretty plots, and your final project.

Week 4:

Intro to Pandas in Python

In this module, you will be introduced to data in Python, review Jupyter, work on data without Pandas, explore Panda series data frames, understand columns and rows, and read data.

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An image of a mobile phone screen with a login page of a restaurant is shown.

Featured Case Study

Work with more than 2.5 million rows of simulated data from a New York Restaurant Group.

This New York restaurant group has eateries across New York City and Boston with a decidedly locavore flavor. They are rethinking every aspect of creating a meal from seed to service. Their mission is to embrace a deeper connection to our food system, supporting minority-run and small-scale farms along the way. They even started their own farm operations in upstate New York as a way to deeply understand the demands of the entire supply chain.

In one year alone, they purchased over 2 million pounds of produce from their 65 local farms. Do you think that creates a lot of data to analyze? Yes it does. In fact, using the restaurant data of more than 2.5 million sales transactions, you’ll apply your new-found Python skills to address some fundamental business questions such as:

Which restaurant locations are the top performers and which are the weakest?
How popular is delivery service in each of the locations?
What are the average number of transactions per day by location and overall?
Which locations are busier at lunch time and therefore require a different staffing regime?
What was the ROI of the marketing investment made for a large special event in NYC on June 24?
How did order volumes compare on the special event day as compared to “normal” busy days in the summer months?

Later in the program, we’ll access Census data and connect to an API for weather data to analyze how demographics and weather affect sales. Finally, you’ll scrape information from this New York restaurant group website to learn more about how product offerings are organized and help determine which location is best for launching a new brand of healthy drinks.

Using this data set, you will use Python to help make decisions on where to invest and to know what’s working.

Program Experience

Past Participant Profile

On your journey to learning Python with Columbia Business School Executive Education, you’ll be in good company. Past participants come from a wide range of industries, job functions, and levels.

Representative Companies:

Amazon.com, Inc.
Bloomingdale's Inc.
Citigroup Inc.
Cognizant
Dell Inc.

Deutsche Bank AG
Facebook, Inc.
Hilltop Securities, Inc.
HSBC Holdings plc
Johnson & Johnson

KPMG International Cooperative
McKinsey & Company
Microsoft Corporation
Morgan Stanley

Ralph Lauren
S&P Global, Inc.
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.
Unilever

Representative Job Titles:

Partner
CEO
COO
CTO

Director
President
Vice President
Consultant

Global Head of Valuation
Chief Performance Manager
Fraud Analytics Manager
IT and Risk Compliance Manager

Project Manager
Senior Credit Analyst
Business Analyst
IT Manager

Participant Testimonials

“The best parts of the course were the program content and the continued challenge exercises which help in getting some practice. The program videos are very well made and detailed which makes it easier to get a grasp on Python. Overall a great learning experience and well worth the effort.”

— Somdutta Sinha, Senior Data Scientist, Visa Middle East FZ LLC, United Arab Emirates

“The videos and assignments were a great way to put into practice what we had learned. Additionally, the final assignment was a great wrap up incorporating real-world scenarios.”

— Corinne Sosa, Senior Analytics Associate, Merkley+Partners, United States

“I wanted to tap into some large public data sets and web scrape sites through this program. By the time we were about halfway through the program, I was already beginning to tackle my dream project. So excited that this small step into Python has opened the door to so many applications in my current role.”

— Ryan Lane, Area Vice President - Strategy and Analytics, Gallagher, United States

“I am very interested in the part of mathematical models, I love the module on Pandas In Python.”

— Israel Lopez Vallejo, Fraud Analytics, Banco Azteca, Mexico

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Program Faculty

Mattan Griffel

Faculty Co-Director; Adjunct Assistant Professor of Business at Columbia Business School

Mattan Griffel is an adjunct professor and Y Combinator-backed entrepreneur. A co-founder of One Month, which offers online bootcamps for coding, Professor Griffel has experience teaching business professionals who want to expand their technical skills. Forbes selected... More info

Daniel Guetta

Faculty Co-Director; Associate Professor of Professional Practice in the Discipline of Decision, Risk and Operations; Director, Center for Pricing and Revenue Management and Business Analytics Initiative

As a professor of business analytics and director of the Center for Pricing Revenue Management and Business Analytics Initiative, Daniel Guetta straddles both the Columbia Business School... More info

slide-faculty-member-41 slide-faculty-member-42

Certificate

Upon completion of the program, participants will receive a certificate of participation from Columbia Business School Executive Education and one day toward a Certificate in Business Excellence.

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Your verified digital certificate will be issued in your legal name and emailed to you, at no additional cost, upon completion of the program, as per the stipulated requirements. All certificate images are for illustrative purposes only and may be subject to change at the discretion of the Columbia Business School Executive Education.

Python for Managers (Online)

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Round 1

The deadline for this round has passed

Round 2

US$2,392 / program fee

Python: An Effective Language Of Business

(Source: Emsi employment data)

(Source: Bloomberg report)

Key Takeaways

Who Is This Program For?

Learning Journey

Program Topics

Introduction:

Week 1:

Week 2:

Week 3:

Week 4:

Week 5:

Week 6:

Week 7:

Week 8:

Introduction:

Week 5:

Week 1:

Week 6:

Week 2:

Week 7:

Week 3:

Week 8:

Week 4:

Featured Case Study

Work with more than 2.5 million rows of simulated data from a New York Restaurant Group.

Program Experience

Past Participant Profile

Participant Testimonials

— Somdutta Sinha, Senior Data Scientist, Visa Middle East FZ LLC, United Arab Emirates

— Corinne Sosa, Senior Analytics Associate, Merkley+Partners, United States

— Ryan Lane, Area Vice President - Strategy and Analytics, Gallagher, United States

— Israel Lopez Vallejo, Fraud Analytics, Banco Azteca, Mexico

Program Faculty

Mattan Griffel

Daniel Guetta

Mattan Griffel

Daniel Guetta

Certificate

Certificate

Early registrations are encouraged. Seats fill up quickly!