INFORMS Announces First Recipients to Earn “CAP” as Certified Analytics Professionals

First Professional Association to Develop Professional Certification Program in Analytics

HANOVER, MD, April 22, 2013 – The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®), the leading professional association in advanced analytics, today announced the first analytics professionals to earn certification in the association’s new Certified Analytics Professional (CAP^TM) program.

“The field of analytics needs an authoritative group to provide a certification program that is universally accepted,” said the association’s President, Anne G. Robinson. “Given our strong academic grounding and our longstanding work with professionals in our field, we assembled a leading group to develop this program and we’re very happy it has launched. I congratulate the first CAP recipients.”

Certificants earn the CAP designation through a combination of education, experience, confirmation of their soft skills (in communication and presentation), and passing a rigorous examination. 

The first formal administration of the examination took place on April 7, 2013 in San Antonio, TX prior to the 2013 INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research. Those who passed were announced today. The initial group of certificants also includes those who developed the exam and those who validated it.

Before the first test was administered, the exam had been taken by pilot tester subject matter experts (SMEs) as well as other SMEs involved in setting the preliminary passing score. The passing rate of those who took this first exam is 77%; indicating that the exam is accessible but not necessarily easy. 

INFORMS received comments from the test takers that the exam fairly represents the end-to-end analytics process. It addresses the analytics process from business and analytics problem formation, through data challenges, to methodology and model selection, deployment of the selected model and lifecycle management.  The complete job/task analysis on which the exam is based can be found here.

Future dates of the exam are:

June 23, 2013, Chicago, IL

July 13, 2013, McLean, VA

October 3, 2013, Boston, MA

October 5, 2013, Minneapolis, MN

For additional information about the INFORMS CAP program and taking the test go to https://www.informs.org/Build-Your-Career/Analytics-Certification or contact the association at 443-757-3500, 1-800-INFORMs, [email protected].

These are the first recipients to earn the CAP designation:

About INFORMS

The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS^®) is the leading professional association for professionals in advanced analytics. INFORMS is an international scientific society with 10,000 members, including Nobel Prize laureates, dedicated to applying scientific methods to help improve decision-making, management, and operations. Members of INFORMS work in business, government, and academia. They are represented in fields as diverse as airlines, health care, law enforcement, the military, financial engineering, and telecommunications. INFORMS serves the scientific and professional needs of operations research analysts, experts in analytics, consultants, scientists, students, educators, and managers, as well as their institutions, by publishing a variety of journals that describe the latest research in operations research. Further information about INFORMS, analytics, and operations research is at www.informs.org.

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