Module B: In Full Swing

This past week included the two introductory courses to Module B at SMU: Organizational Behavior on Thursday night and Executive Statistics on Saturday morning. The tone set in both is dramatically different than the Module A courses.

Neither class will be as intuitively challenging as the Module A courses. Organizational Behavior should be a welcome respite for many students from the rigors of Economics and Accounting. Statistics is also straight forward, but it will require a highly attentive student.

Discrete math is limited in scope to algebraic functions -- we covered "solving for 'X'" using means and extremes during the first class. Square roots, natural logarithms, "e," etc.: This is the language of statistics. Words like binomial and equations named after their creators are common. Because this is the type of math every student is required to do, be prepared for lots of out-of-class work and number crunching.

Hopefully, you will get a professor that shares my professor's view: statistics needs to be applicable. Her examples are frought with practical application and dogma free.

Organizational behavior boils down to involvement in class and staying on top of reading. There are two primary approaches to management courses: Case Study and Theory. Harvard is known for being the best case study school and whatever b-school you attend, you can be sure you will be tasked with working a Harvard Business School case study at least once. Schools that lean to theory have you read lots of "How to.." material. SMU happens to be a hybrid between the two.

I prefer the case study methodology. A constant exposure to crises and situations is a great way to learn and evaluate what should be done from a real world perspective. At least I'm getting some of that.