This book explores emerging research and pedagogy in analytics and data science that have become core to many businesses as they work to derive value from data. The chapters examine the role of analytics and data science to create, spread, develop and utilize analytics applications for practice. Selected chapters provide a good balance between discussing research advances and pedagogical tools in key topic areas in analytics and data science in a systematic manner. This book also focuses on several business applications of these emerging technologies in decision making, i.e., business analytics. The chapters in Analytics and Data Science: Advances in Research and Pedagogy are written by leading academics and practitioners that participated at the Business Analytics Congress 2015. Applications of analytics and data science technologies in various domains are still evolving. For instance, the explosive growth in big data and social media analytics requires examination of the impact of these technologies and applications on business and society. As organizations in various sectors formulate their IT strategies and investments, it is imperative to understand how various analytics and data science approaches contribute to the improvements in organizational information processing and decision making. Recent advances in computational capacities coupled by improvements in areas such as data warehousing, big data, analytics, semantics, predictive and descriptive analytics, visualization, and real-time analytics have particularly strong implications on the growth of analytics and data science.

This volume explores emerging research and pedagogy in analytics, collaboration, and decision support with an emphasis on business intelligence and social media. In general, the chapters help understand where technology involvement in human decisions is headed. Reading the chapters can help understand the opportunities and threats associated with the use of information technology in decision making. Computing and information technologies are reshaping our global society, but they can potentially reshape it in negative as well as positive ways. Analytics, collaboration and computerized decision support are powerful decision aiding and decision making tools that have enormous potential to impact crisis decision making, regulation of financial systems, healthcare decision making and many more important decision domains. Many information technologies can potentially support, assist and even decide for human decision makers. Despite the potential, some researchers think that we know the answers to how these technologies will change society. The "Wisdom of Crowds" or "Big Data" become the topic of the day and are soon replaced with new marketing terms. In many ways, mobile technology is just another form factor to adapt decision support capabilities too and experiment with new capabilities. The cloud is a nebulous metaphor that adds to the mystery of information technology. Wireless technology enables the ubiquitous presence of analytics and decision support. With new networking capabilities, collaboration is possible anywhere and everywhere using voice, video and text. Documents can be widely shared and massive numbers of documents can be carried on a small tablet computer. Recent developments in technologies impact the processes organizations use to make decisions. In addition, academics are looking for ways to enhance their pedagogy to train students to be more adept in understanding how emerging technology will be used effectively for decision making in organizations. The chapters are based on papers originally reviewed at the Special Interest Group on Decision Support Systems (SIGDSS) Workshop at the 2013 International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2013). Ultimately this volume endeavors to find a balance between systematizing what we know, so we can teach our findings from prior research better, and stimulating excitement to move the field in new directions.