According to Emsi employment data, monthly active postings for managers with Python skills have increased significantly, by 90% in the past year, and continues to grow at a staggering pace.

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.

Columbia Business School Executive Education’s two-month online program — Python for Managers (Online) — is designed to get you off the sidelines and into the programming action. The program teaches you how to implement basic coding skills for practical business applications. Columbia Business School is at the nexus where technology and business merge.

The program is divided into two sections: part one is focused on fundamentals and part two is business applications. The curriculum includes mini challenges designed to give you hands-on coding practice. Ultimately, after taking this program, you will be able to organize and analyze data efficiently — by writing your own Python code.

With a focus on business application, the program includes opportunities to read and write scripts, work with simulated data from a case study on a New York restaurant group and executing a final project with real-world application. At the end of the program, you will be able to organize, aggregate, and analyze large amounts of data using Python.

Other Formats

This program is also being offered in a live online format. Learn more about Python for Managers (Live Online). To compare program formats, click here.

Please Contact Us

Please contact our partners at Emeritus at [email protected], +13159825094 or +13152772746 for a personal conversation to learn more.

IMPACT

You will emerge from Columbia Business School Python for Managers (Online) with the capacity to understand and utilize Python, fostering a renewed confidence in your decision-making abilities. It will accelerate your ability to have a real impact on your organization and serve as a springboard for your career.

The key takeaways of the program are:

• Learn the fundamentals of coding in Python with a focus on practical business applications
• Read and write scripts
• Learn to communicate effectively with programmers whether you hire, manage, or collaborate with them
• 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
• Explore the practical applications of web scraping and APIs

Upon completion of this program, you will earn one credit towards a Certificate with select alumni and tuition benefits. Learn more.

PROGRAM STRUCTURE

A hybrid of Python fundamentals and hands-on learnings in the application of Python, this program teaches you 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
• Setting Up Your Development Environment

Week 1: Python Fundamentals Part 1

• Review Evolution and Purpose of Python
• Understanding Your Development Environment
• Customizing Your Command Line and Practicing Command Line Prompts
• Start Building a Mental Map of Python Concepts
• Practice Coding with Basic Python Scripts

Week 2: Python Fundamentals Part 2

• If Statements
• Else and Elif Statements
• Logic Structures
• Lists
• For Loops

Week 3: Python Fundamentals Part 3

• Understanding the Role of Dictionaries, Functions, and Import
• Practice Writing Code for Dictionaries and Functions
• Refactor Code for Efficiency and Simplicity

Week 4: Intro to Pandas in Python

• Intro to Data in Python
• Review of Jupyter
• Data Without Pandas
• Panda Series Data frames
• Columns and Rows
• Reading Data

Week 5: Analyzing Data with Python

• Filtering Data
• Editing Data frames
• Data Hygiene: Duplicated and Missing Values
• Combining Data: An Introduction
• Combining Data: Choosing the Kind of Join
• Combining Data: Two Warnings
• Combining Data: Ensuring You’re Not Missing Anything
• Constructing Full Orders in the New York restaurant group case

Week 6: APIs and Web Scraping with Python

• Explore Examples of APIs
• Use Python to Connect to an API
• Develop an Understanding of HTML and How Web Scrapers in Python Pull Information from a Page

Week 7: Applying APIs and Web Scraping

• Loading Nutrition Data
• Understanding the Structure
• Scraping the Data
• Joining It All Together
• Connecting to Weather API
• Creating Weather Dataframe
• Intro to Aggregating Data

Week 8: Tying It Together

• Advanced Data Aggregation
• Aggregating with Time
• Making Pretty Plots
• Final Project

For full details of the curriculum, please download the brochure.

PARTICIPANT PROFILE

Professionals interested in learning practical coding skills that allows them to leverage large amounts of data they already have, or that they want to collect, in order to make better business decisions. No prior experience in programming is required.

Representative roles and titles may include:

• Product managers, growth hackers, business strategy managers, product marketing managers
• Risk managers, portfolio managers, high frequency traders
• Data analysts, data scientists, analytics managers and VPs
• Project managers
• Management consultants
• Entrepreneurs
• Anyone who has outgrown excel for data analysis

Columbia Business School alumni and up to four of their colleagues are eligible for a 25 percent tuition benefit for this program. More on the Alumni Tuition Benefit.

FACULTY

Mattan Griffel, Faculty Co-Director
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Business
Decision, Risk, and Operations

Mattan Griffel is an adjunct professor and Y Combinator-backed entrepreneur. A co-founder of One Month, which offers online bootcamps for coding, Griffel has experience teaching business professionals who want to expand their technical skills. Forbes selected him as one of the 30 Under 30 in Education. In addition to programming and code, Griffel has taught entrepreneurship and online education. Among the companies he has advised are Pepsico, Bloomberg, GM, NYSE, and JP Morgan. He studied philosophy and finance at New York University, where he wrote his thesis on the metaphysics of consciousness.
 

Daniel Guetta, Faculty Co-Director
Associate Professor of Professional Practice
Decision, Risk, and Operations
Director of the 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 and Columbia Engineering. He has worked with dozens of companies in a broad range of industries to help them drive value using data, analytics, and technology. Prior to joining Columbia, he served as a data scientist and engagement manager at Palantir Technologies.