Math Camp (MBA program)

[[ VERSION: 09042016 ]]

Professor: Dr. Peter Ebbes

Email: ebbes@hec.fr
Building: W1, Rm # 316
Phone: 01.39.67.97.92

Teaching assistant: Ana Scekic

Email: ana.scekic@hec.edu

Overview and learning outcomes

Many business problems require some basic understanding of mathematics. For example, the
necessary calculations to price our product and meet our budget require us to add, subtract,
multiply and divide numbers. To maximize the return of our clients portfolio requires some
knowledge of basic optimization concepts. If we want to do inventory management well, we
need to understand some basic probability calculations to handle the uncertainty in demand. Or,
what about all that data that is nowadays available to businesses and is often called big data?
Mathematical and statistical approaches help managers to leverage such data for decision
making.
Math camp is offered to the incoming MBA students during the intro weeks of the program.
The camp will serve as a refresh for some basic mathematics and statistics that is needed to
understand and complete course work in the core classes offered at HEC Paris. Each of the core
classes will take these basic concepts further around specific themes in finance, accounting,
marketing, and statistics, for example, focusing on decision making.
The learning outcomes will be different for each student. Students that have a strong
background in mathematics will be quite familiar with the covered mathematical concepts,
however, they will find this camp useful to understand how such basic mathematics are applied
in business and economic environments. Students that have not worked with mathematics since
high school or college will find the camp useful as it will work as a true refresher of basic math
concepts. And students that have not had a chance to fully familiarize themselves with basic
mathematics will find the camp useful as it will provide them with an organized layout of basic
math concepts relevant to business problems, that they can then use as a solid basis to further
study and deepen their math skills during the core classes.

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Key topics
The main topics of math camp include the following:
Day 1: Functions, derivatives, and integrals
Day 2: Randomness and probabilities
Day 3: Statistics and SPSS

Course materials
Required material
There is no required course material. We will make lecture notes available through Blackboard
(HEC Paris course sharing platform), after each class session.
SPSS statistical software
On the third day of math camp we will be working with SPSS. This statistical software program
will also be used in the core statistics class, as well as several other classes at HEC Paris. SPSS can
be obtained at no cost from HEC Paris. You need to download and install SPSS from the intranet
and after that walk over to the IT helpdesk (room S111) with your laptop to get the license. You
need to complete this process before coming to the third day of math camp.
Recommended material
Depending on your level of (comfort with) math, we strongly recommend you to review some
basic concepts of math, in particular for the topics covered during the first two days listed
above. Any basic high school text book would work. We personally like the following website
(and, yes, math is fun):
http://www.mathsisfun.com/
This website is well linked in the Google search engine, and searching in Google often gets you
to the right sub-page on this website. For instance, to read up some basics on functions (day
1), you could type in Google math is fun functions and you will find the following page:
http://www.mathsisfun.com/sets/function.html
Or, for the second topic on day 1 listed above, derivatives, you could search in Google math
is fun derivatives, which will get you to the following page:
http://www.mathsisfun.com/calculus/derivatives-introduction.html
Similarly, for some basic concepts in probability (day 2), search for math is fun probability in
Google:
http://www.mathsisfun.com/data/probability.html
Typically these pages describe basic concepts, and through hyperlinks, you can read up more.
They also provide some exercises.

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Another very useful online resource is provided by Khan academy. Khan academy offers a
collection of online tutorials on basic math and probability. Their videos are very useful and
typically centered around a particular topic. For instance, you could Google Khan derivatives
to find their material on derivatives. Or you can find any topic by browsing their website directly.
You are strongly encouraged to review their basic concepts in your own time before or after
math camp. Their website is here: https://www.khanacademy.org/

Teaching methods
To achieve the course objectives we meet three times for two hours. Please note that this is a
math boot camp and not a full fletched course on mathematics. Depending on your level of
comfort with mathematics, you may have to study up on your own before or after math camp.
In class we will introduce and explain the basic mathematical concepts, and then work on mini
cases in a business context illustrating these basic concepts.
Given the large differences in backgrounds of the students, we will form pairs of students who
will jointly work on the mini cases during class. The pairs will be formed based on your answers
to some attitudinal questions about math, that you will fill out in the week prior to the first math
camp session. A student with a high attitudinal score (= high level of comfort with math) will
be paired up with a student with a low score (= lower level of comfort with math). The pairs of
students will sit together in class for the three math camp sessions.
Based on past experience, we find that the pairing of students works well for math camp.
Basically, we are simulating a standard business environment where we often have to work with
colleagues with very different backgrounds. Yet, we need to understand each other, talk to each
other, learn from each other, and help each other. Hence, math camp will give us a first
opportunity to leverage each others skills and experience to solve challenging business
problems.

Grading
Math camp is considered a regular course at HEC Paris and bears one (1) credit. The grade will
be a pass / fail grade. The grade will be fully based on attendance, effort, and class
participation. There is no exam and there are no graded assignments.
In this course, it is expected that each student is familiar with the HEC MBA rules & policies
handbook and will behave in a manner that is consistent with this document.

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Schedule Fall 2016

There will be two sections for math camp (ES1 and ES2). You will receive an email from the HEC
Paris MBA administrative office notifying you which section you are assigned to. Please consult
the screens in the MBA building (building S) for the class room location on the day of class.
The schedule for ES1 and ES2 is as follows (for the topics of each day, please see above on p2):

ES1

Date

Time

Day 1

Sept 12

140pm-340pm

Day 2

Sept 13

140pm-340pm

Day 3

Sept 19

1pm-3pm

ES2

Date

Time

Day 1

Sept 12

9am-11am

Day 2

Sept 13

9am-11am

Day 3

Sept 19

10am-12pm