Michael I. Parzen

Michael Parzen is a Senior Lecturer in the Technology and Operations Management unit at Harvard Business School. He is an applied statistician with extensive experience in data science education and currently teaches Applied Business Analytics as an MBA elective course.

Professor Parzen has extensive business school experience, having previously had academic appointments at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. For the last ten years Professor Parzen was Co-Director of Undergraduate Studies and Director of the Master’s Program in Statistics for Harvard University’s Department of Statistics. He is also an instructor in the Harvard Business Analytics Program (HBAP) and co-designed the HBAP course Foundations of Quantitative Analysis.

Professor Parzen’s research interests are in both statistical education and applicable statistical methods for Missing Data and Non-Standard Regression Modeling. His work has been featured in top Statistics journals such as Biometrika and the Journals of the American Statistical Association. Professor Parzen has consulted and given executive education courses at several major corporations including McDonalds, General Electric and Progressive Insurance. He has also consulted for data analytics start-ups as well as litigation support.

Professor Parzen holds a Sc.B. and Sc.M. degree in Mathematics from Carnegie Mellon University, a Sc.M. degree in Applied Mathematics from Brown University and a Sc.D. in Biostatistics from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Cases and Teaching Materials

• Parzen, Michael, and Paul Hamilton. "Probability Distributions." Harvard Business School Technical Note 621-704, February 2021. View Details
• Parzen, Michael, Eddie Lin, Douglas Ng, and Jessie Li. "Fizzy Fusion: When Data-Driven Decision Making Failed." Harvard Business School Case 623-071, April 2023. View Details
• Parzen, Michael, Eddie Lin, Douglas Ng, and Jessie Li. "An Art & A Science: How to Apply Design Thinking to Data Science Challenges." Harvard Business School Technical Note 623-070, April 2023. View Details
• Bojinov, Iavor, Michael Parzen, and Paul Hamilton. "On Ramp to Crypto." Harvard Business School Case 623-040, October 2022. (Revised October 2022.) View Details
• Bojinov, Iavor I., Michael Parzen, and Paul Hamilton. "Causal Inference." Harvard Business School Module Note 622-111, June 2022. (Revised July 2022.) View Details
• Bojinov, Iavor I., Michael Parzen, and Paul Hamilton. "Prediction & Machine Learning." Harvard Business School Module Note 622-101, March 2022. (Revised July 2022.) View Details
• Bojinov, Iavor I., Michael Parzen, and Paul Hamilton. "Linear Regression." Harvard Business School Module Note 622-100, March 2022. (Revised July 2022.) View Details
• Bojinov, Iavor I., Michael Parzen, and Paul Hamilton. "Statistical Inference." Harvard Business School Module Note 622-099, March 2022. (Revised July 2022.) View Details
• Bojinov, Iavor I., Michael Parzen, and Paul Hamilton. "Exploratory Data Analysis." Harvard Business School Module Note 622-098, March 2022. (Revised July 2022.) View Details
• Bojinov, Iavor I., and Michael Parzen. "Data Science at the Warriors." Harvard Business School Case 622-048, August 2021. (Revised July 2022.) View Details
• Bojinov, Iavor I., Chiara Farronato, Janice H. Hammond, Michael Parzen, and Paul Hamilton. "Precision Paint Co." Harvard Business School Case 622-055, August 2021. View Details
• Parzen, Michael, Natalie Epstein, Chiara Farronato, and Michael Toffel. T-tests: Theory and Practice. Harvard Business School Tutorial 621-707, February 2021. View Details
• Grushka-Cockayne, Yael, Michael Parzen, Paul Hamilton, and Steven Randazzo. "Kaggle 2019 Data Science Survey." Harvard Business School Case 620-091, January 2020. View Details
• Parzen, Michael, and Paul Hamilton. "The FIRE Savings Calculator." Harvard Business School Case 621-087, January 2021. View Details
• Parzen, Michael, and Paul Hamilton. "Introduction to Linear Regression." Harvard Business School Technical Note 621-086, June 2021. View Details