The Center for Positive/Empirical Analysis of Political Economy supports Waseda students who study abroad through the international network QTEM (Quantitative Techniques for Economics and Management). Below is a report from one student who participated this spring.
NAKAGAWA, Fusei Graduate School of Economics M2
My Experience at UPF Barcelona School of Management (UPF-BSM)
Hello, my name is Fusei, and I am a second-year master’s student at the Graduate School of Economics. I would like to tell you about mainly what I learned in the classes at UPF-BSM and how I will make use of this experience in the future.
I wrote about my school life and QTEM classmates from Italy, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands before here (only available in Japanese). This is a picture from when I went to a soccer game. They did not only have super language abilities, but also helped me during difficult occasions. I’m really thankful for and respect them a lot.
UPF-BSM is a well-known business school at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, where courses such as corporate finance and marketing are offered in addition to those related to data analysis. I took the following courses:
1. Financing for Start-ups
2. Practical Data Science
3. Computer Science for Business Leaders
4. Advanced Statistical Methods
One of the courses that attracted me for its practicality was Advanced Statistical Methods. I learned analysis focusing on categorical variables and multivariate analysis methods. Through the course, I eventually became able to analyze texts such as hotel reviews. The methods I learned seemed very applicable in various business situations.
This is a report using multivariate analysis that I learned in my class. Here I used a method called multidimensional scaling (MDS). It is a type of cluster analysis that summarizes high dimensional data
into two dimensions and visually represents the distance between the data. For this report, I utilized some data from a subjective evaluation of 15 countries in terms of various aspects such as climate, safety, and food culture. The results showed that a group of safe countries (Japan, Norway, and Denmark) and a group of countries with good food (Italy, Spain, and China) were clearly observed as clusters. Faculty members commented that we should write more about the interpretation of the results. MDS is a technique that is often used in marketing, and I expect to utilize widely in a huge variety of business situations in the future. I am sure that the intensive learning which was challenging and required a high ability of concentration will help me in tough global business situations.
After studying in Barcelona for 3 months, which passed so quickly with a lot of good experiences and memories, I am now studying at Monash University through QTEM again. It is ranked 58th in the QS World University Ranking 2022 and is a very popular university in Australia due to not only the excellent learning environment but also charming faculty members and students. Most of the lectures offered at Monash University are theory-oriented. For example, in the Statistical Machine learning class, we are learning the theory of neural networks using perceptron from scratch. The classes are very enjoyable: it is theoretical, but involves actual coding and implementation as well. Monash University is a very comfortable place to study abroad for QTEM, so I sincerely would like to encourage you to join and study.
