Description
AI can draft a chart in seconds. The analyst still owns the decision it supports.
The Defensible Decision: A Guide to AI-Assisted Business Analytics gives analysts, managers, and MBA students a practical discipline for working with AI-generated reports, dashboards, and visualizations. A chart is not defensible because it looks polished or appeared quickly. It is defensible when it serves a named audience and decision, follows principles the analyst can explain, and survives a specific check.
The book teaches visualization principles first, drawing on Kirk, Knaflic, Tufte, Few, and Wexler. It then shows how to direct Power BI Copilot and related analytics surfaces without accepting the first plausible draft.
Inside, you will learn how to:
- Frame the work with a six-field Business Requirements Document: audience, decision, question, comparison, time window, and success criterion
- Turn analysis into an audience-ready argument through context, story, chart selection, focus, and accessible visual design
- Use the CSAR loop-Crystallize, Scope, Assemble, Refine-to direct and correct AI output
- Verify Copilot reports, AI visuals, and data-question responses before they inform a decision
- Preserve provenance, check fairness, name the chart's decision boundary, and disclose AI's role
Written for analysts, managers, MBA students, and business-intelligence professionals who need charts that remain credible after the presentation ends. This is not a Power BI tool manual or a generic prompt book. It stays at the decision-and-direction layer so the discipline outlives the interface.
Companion resources at thedefensibledecision.com include the Chart Gallery, Prompt Library, downloadable datasets, Business Requirements Document templates, chapter resources, and current references. For guided application, The Defensible Decision: Practice Workbook provides chapter-matched cases, rubrics, independent problems, and real-work exercises.
About the author. Dr. Fabio Correa, DBA, writes fiction and nonfiction about human judgment and the boundary between human and artificial minds. He is Director of Business Analytics at Microsoft and creator of the AI Readiness Scale (AIRS). He teaches graduate MBA students and speaks about enterprise AI adoption and human-AI collaboration.
Author: Fabio Correa
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: 08/02/2026
Pages: 436
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.66lbs
Size: 10.00h x 7.00w x 0.89d
ISBN13: 9798184294315
BISAC Categories:
- Computers | Business & Productivity Software | Business Intelligence
- Computers | Artificial Intelligence | Generative AI
- Business & Economics | Decision Making & Problem Solving
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