| page 2/final page previous page IX. Data Mining. This site, www.bos.frb.org/economic/nerr/rr2000/q3/mining.htm, maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, has an article by Miriam Wasserman, on data mining. The article gives a good overview of data mining and gives examples of data mining benefits. This site, www.tekguide.net/ai/data_mining.shtml, maintained by TekGuide.net, has links to several sites with data mining information. Of particular interest to management accountants might be a site that provides information on how the Bank of Montreal uses data mining. The Data Warehousing Institute’s website, www.tdwi.org/index.aspx, provides access to case studies, lessons, and other information on data mining and business intelligence. Click on “Research”, and then “What Works” to get to this information. Other information, e.g., the Institute’s online journal Business Intelligence Journal requires Institute membership. The site has a search system. The American Association for Artificial Intelligence has a site, www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/mining.html, devoted to providing information on data mining. Scores of links are provided to other data mining websites. Many of these sites, in turn, have links to websites with information on data mining. Business applications include mining customer data for insights into customer characteristics and identifying risky borrowers. X. Decision Support Systems. DSSResources.com maintains a resource center at this site, www.dssresources.com/index.html, which has a large repository of information on decision support systems (systems that aid in group decision making). Clicking on “Library” will take you to resources available. Some of the resources are free, but much of the resources require a subscription. XI. Expert Systems. A dated (1994) website, www.accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aies/www.bus.orst.edu/faculty/brownc/es_tutor/acc_es.htm, from Carol. E. Brown, provides an overview of the use of expert systems in accounting, as of the date of the website. Areas identified, in which expert systems were being used, include auditing, tax, and management accounting. Commercial systems are identified and described. Although the information is dated, the presentation is good, and probably comprehensive, as of the date of the article. XII. Mega Websites. This link, www.decisioneering.com/index.html, takes you to a site, maintained by the software company Decisioneering, Inc., that provides articles and links to topics related to decision analysis. Although many of the articles are written by Decisioneering employees and oriented to Decisioneering products, many are not. A good way to use this site is to go to the Knowledgebase page (under Support), and use the “search the site” feature at the bottom of the page. Search on key terms that interest you. The results will be both links that are provided at the site, and articles that are available at the site. Links are provided to sites dealing with decision analysis using Excel, risk analysis and management, simulations, and forecasting. The Duke University's Fuqua School of Business maintains this site, www.faculty.fuqua.duke.edu/dawaeb/dasw.htm, from which you can identify commercially available and free software for use in decision analysis and related functions. The Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences maintains this site, www.informs.org/Resources, from which you can find hundreds of links to sites dealing with most, if not all, topics generally recognized as making up the operations research and management sciences field. From this page, you can search on a keyword for sites with the keyword in their descriptions. You also can use the “Select a Category” feature to find sites listed under the selected category. The American Association for Artificial Intelligence maintains this site, www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/applications.html, with many links to websites that provide information on using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques in various applications. From this site, you can link (at the bottom of the page) to sites dealing with AI applications in banking, finance, investing, business, manufacturing, fraud detection and prevention, marketing, customer-relations, e-commerce, and transportation and shipping. XIII. Lecture Notes. Professor Hossein Arsham, at the University of Baltimore, discuses quantitative models for use in helping decision making at this site, www.home.ubalt.edu/ntsbarsh/opre640/opre640.htm. Such models can help formulate the needed decisions and evaluate, identify options, and assist in the process of making a decision. Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business maintains this site, www.faculty.fuqua.duke.edu/daweb/lexicon.htm, which defines and discusses key concepts and terms found in decision making-science. XIV. Mathematics Resource Center. The website MathWorld, www.mathworld.wolfram.com/letters, maintained by Eric Weisstein, offers extensive formulas and math explanations and examples. Sections deal with math in accounting, economics, finance, and in operations research and optimization-related topics. XV. Conclusions. Twenty-nine websites are identified in this article, which, hopefully, will lead the management accountant to a lot of useful quantitative-analytical techniques, methods, and tools. Management accountants are using many of these techniques, methods, and tools. These websites, identified here, can serve to refresh the practicing management accountant on these techniques, methods, and tools, and increase his (or her) understanding and applications of them. Links to all of the sites identified in this article are also available from the Management Accounting Information Center’s front-page topic “Quantitative analysis”. Definitions and explanations of terms can be found under the front-page topic “Definitions and explanations of terms, abbreviations, and acronyms”. Some of the other front-page topics, e.g. “Accounts receivable, accounts payable, inventory, and working capital”, “Costs – accounting, management, and other aspects”, “Planning, forecasting, and budgeting”, and “Profitability, pricing, margins, and returns” may contain links to quantitative analysis techniques, methods and tools unique to those topics, and not found in this article (or under the front page topic “Quantitative analysis”). Research and other types of articles might be found by searching under the front-page topic “Journal, magazines, and news articles and publications on accounting and business”. please click here to send an email to comment on this article or to suggest topics for other articles please click here to return to the Management Accounting Information Center's homepage |
| Quantitative Analysis Information on the Internet |