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Business Analytics Programming II: Algorithmic Thinking

When you'll study it
Semester 1
CATS points
15
ECTS points
7.5
Level
Level 5
Module lead
Tiejun Ma
Academic year
2025-26

Module overview

Programming is a structured way of giving a computer unambiguous instructions to perform specific tasks. Knowledge and experience of programming not only improves your employability but it also teaches you analytical skills such as breaking down a problem into smaller parts and recognising and reusing previously solved problems.

The purpose of this module is to equip you with the knowledge and skills for writing structured computer programs. Although these fundamentals can be achieved using any high level programming language, e.g. Java and Python, the module introduces Visual Basic for Application (VBA) as the introductory language.

VBA is a very versatile, event-driven programming language. Programmers predominantly use VBA algorithms to build customized applications and solutions for Microsoft office applications such as MS-Excel, MS-Word and MS-Access to enhance the capabilities of those applications. For example, you can build a VBA algorithm to automate the repetitive task of forecasting future demand for a product upon updating current sales data in Excel.

The module will also briefly introduce the Python language and illustrate how to transfer VBA programming skills to Python by highlighting differences and similarities between the two languages.

Although the module assumes no prior programming experience, its analytics orientation best suits students who are highly interested in problem solving, have strong analytical skills and are highly numerate. MANG1019 or MANG1007 is a pre-requisite for this module, with a mark of at least 65% being achieved.

Linked modules

Pre-requisites: MANG1019 or MANG1007 orMANG1047