ISYE 6501 - Midterm 1 derived questions
and simple answers
,What do descriptive questions ask? - CORRECT ANS:What happened? (e.g., which customers are most
alike)
What do predictive questions ask? - CORRECT ANS:What will happen? (e.g., what will Google's stock
price be?)
What do prescriptive questions ask? - CORRECT ANS:What action(s) would be best? (e.g., where to put
traffic lights)
What is a model? - CORRECT ANS:Real-life situation expressed as math.
What do classifiers help you do? - CORRECT ANS:differentiate
What is a soft classifier and when is it used? - CORRECT ANS:In some cases, there won't be a line that
separates all of the labeled examples. So we use a classifier that minimizes the number of mistakes.
What does it mean when the classifier/decision boundary is almost parallel to the vertical x-axis? -
CORRECT ANS:The horizontal attribute is all that is needed.
What does it mean when the classifier/decision boundary is almost parallel to the horizontal y-axis? -
CORRECT ANS:The vertical attribute is all that is needed.
What is time-series data? - CORRECT ANS:The same data recorded over time often recorded at equal
intervals
What is quantitative data? - CORRECT ANS:Number with a meaning: higher means more, lower means
less (e.g., age, sales, temperature, income)
, What is categorical data? - CORRECT ANS:Numbers w/o meaning (e.g., zip codes), non-numeric (e.g.,
hair color), binary data (e.g., male/female, yes/no, on/off)
Which of these is time series data?
A. The average cost of a house in the United States every year since 1820
B. The height of each professional basketball player in the NBA at the start of the season - CORRECT
ANS:A
Which of these is structured data?
A. The contents of a person's Twitter feed
B. The amount of money in a person's bank account - CORRECT ANS:B
What is structured data? - CORRECT ANS:Data that can be stores in a structured way
What is unstructured data? - CORRECT ANS:Data that is not easily described and stored (e.g., written
text)
A survey of 25 people recorded each person's family size and type of car. Which of these is a data point?
A. The 14th person's family size and car type
B. The 14th person's family size
C.The car type of each person - CORRECT ANS:A.
A data point is all the information about one observation
The farther the wrongly classified point is from the line ___ - CORRECT ANS:The bigger the mistake
we've made
and simple answers
,What do descriptive questions ask? - CORRECT ANS:What happened? (e.g., which customers are most
alike)
What do predictive questions ask? - CORRECT ANS:What will happen? (e.g., what will Google's stock
price be?)
What do prescriptive questions ask? - CORRECT ANS:What action(s) would be best? (e.g., where to put
traffic lights)
What is a model? - CORRECT ANS:Real-life situation expressed as math.
What do classifiers help you do? - CORRECT ANS:differentiate
What is a soft classifier and when is it used? - CORRECT ANS:In some cases, there won't be a line that
separates all of the labeled examples. So we use a classifier that minimizes the number of mistakes.
What does it mean when the classifier/decision boundary is almost parallel to the vertical x-axis? -
CORRECT ANS:The horizontal attribute is all that is needed.
What does it mean when the classifier/decision boundary is almost parallel to the horizontal y-axis? -
CORRECT ANS:The vertical attribute is all that is needed.
What is time-series data? - CORRECT ANS:The same data recorded over time often recorded at equal
intervals
What is quantitative data? - CORRECT ANS:Number with a meaning: higher means more, lower means
less (e.g., age, sales, temperature, income)
, What is categorical data? - CORRECT ANS:Numbers w/o meaning (e.g., zip codes), non-numeric (e.g.,
hair color), binary data (e.g., male/female, yes/no, on/off)
Which of these is time series data?
A. The average cost of a house in the United States every year since 1820
B. The height of each professional basketball player in the NBA at the start of the season - CORRECT
ANS:A
Which of these is structured data?
A. The contents of a person's Twitter feed
B. The amount of money in a person's bank account - CORRECT ANS:B
What is structured data? - CORRECT ANS:Data that can be stores in a structured way
What is unstructured data? - CORRECT ANS:Data that is not easily described and stored (e.g., written
text)
A survey of 25 people recorded each person's family size and type of car. Which of these is a data point?
A. The 14th person's family size and car type
B. The 14th person's family size
C.The car type of each person - CORRECT ANS:A.
A data point is all the information about one observation
The farther the wrongly classified point is from the line ___ - CORRECT ANS:The bigger the mistake
we've made
