News Room

David Simchi-Levi, MIT Professor, INFORMS Fellow and Former Editor-in-Chief of Operations Research (INFORMS Journal) 

The ability to understand a combination of historical behavior, market conditions and future needs drives decision making. New analytic capabilities that combine machine learning and optimization can take into account historical characteristics and competitor behavior to determine future demand that will allow optimization for the best results - such as profit, market share or revenue.

Examples of decisions where this approach can be used is assortment, pricing, sourcing strategies for new products, predictive maintenance using process sensors.

During WWII, academics developed “Operations Research” techniques involving statistics and linear programming to hunt enemy submarines, supply troops on the ground and deliver ordnance to targets. Soon after the war ended, Operations Research academics began to apply their methodologies to investing. In 1952 Harry Markowitz, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, published a paper on portfolio selection in the Journal of Finance. Markowitz’s quantitative approach to investment theory was radically different from the conventional stock market wisdom at the time, which focused on picking winning stocks and concentrating stock holdings to maximize return. Investors knew that holding stocks meant taking risks, and they were led to believe that the only way to reduce risk was to become more competent at picking stocks. Some investors were following the advice of Gerald M. Loeb, the co-founder of brokerage firm E.F. Hutton, who wrote “once you obtain competency, diversification is undesirable.” Markowitz’s work along with others gave birth to what is now known as Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT). MPT provided investors quantitative ways to reduce risk and optimize their return.

While you’ll have to determine your own goals and certification needs, let’s look at a handful of important and valuable certifications all IT professionals should consider earning.

1. Certified Analytics Professional

CAP certification enables you to understand the entire analytics process. From framing business and analytic problems to deployment and model lifecycle management, you’ll have full knowledge of everything that goes into general analytics by the time you finish this certification process.