Ch. 6: Enhancing Business Intelligence Using Big Data and Analytics Exam Questions and Answers

Business Intelligence (BI) - Answer- Referring to tools and techniques for analyzing and visualizing past data Advanced Analytics (Data Science) - Answer- Refers to tools and techniques used to understand why something happened, predict future outcomes, or discover hidden patterns in large data sets Data-Driven Organizations - Answer- Make decisions that can be backed up with verifiable data Measurably more productive and profitable, can better respond to ongoing threats and opportunities, and can better plan for the future Data - Answer- Structured: such as transaction data, fit neatly into spreadsheets or databases Semistructured: such as clickstreams and sensor data Unstructured: such as text, audio, and video Big Data: high volume, variety, and velocity Continuous Planning Process - Answer- Continuously monitor and analyze data and business processes; the results lead to ongoing adjustments to how the organization is managed and updates to the organizational plans Database Concepts - Answer- Entity: something you collect data about, such as people or classes, a table Record: a collection of related attributes about a single instance of an entity Attribute: column in the table Database Types - Answer- Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS): attempt to balance efficiency of storage needs, ease of retrieval, and other factors by storing data in tables linked via relationships NoSQL: highly scalable, as they can be distributed across multiple machines, which works especially well in a cloud computing infrastructure Data Model - Answer- A map or diagram that represents entities and their relationships Data Type - Answer- Helps the DBMS organize and sort the data, complete calculations, and allocate storage space; each attribute in the database needs to be of a certain type (text/number/date/etc) Data Dictionary - Answer- A document explaining several pieces of metadata for each attribute, such as its name, the type of data expected, and valid values Business Rules - Answer- Policies by which a business runs Master Data Management - Answer- Master Data: the data deemed most important in the operation of a business Management: Creating a single version of the truth Form - Answer- Typically has blanks where the user can enter data or make choices, each of which represents an attribute within a database record Query - Answer- To retrieve data from a database Structured Query Language (SQL) - Answer- The most common language used to interface with RDBMS Report - Answer- A compilation of data from the database that is organized and displayed to the user (either on screen or on paper) Report Generators - Answer- Help users to quickly build interactive reports and visualizations to present data in a useful format and help business users make sense of large amounts of data that are typically stored in organizational databases Report Forms - Answer- Scheduled reports - produced at defined intervals to support routine decisions Drill-down reports - provide greater detail to analyze why something happened Exception reports - highlight situations that are out of the normal range Key-indicator reports - provide a summary of critical metrics on a recurring schedule Ad hoc queries - unplanned information needs for non routine decisions, typically not saved or used again Operational Systems - Answer- Used to interact with customers and run a business in real time, such as sales order processing and reservation systems Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) - Answer- Provide immediate automated responses to the requests of users and are destined to handle multiple concurrent transactions from customers Informational Systems - Answer- Designed to support decision making based on stable point-in-time or historical data Data Warehouses - Answer- Integrate multiple large databased and other data sources into a single repository Extraction, Transformation, and Loading - Answer- Extraction - Data needs to be extracted from various different source systems Transformation - Data are being cleansed and manipulated to fit the needs of the analysis Loading - Transformed data are loaded into the data warehouse and are ready for being used for complex analyses Data Cleansing - Answer- The process of detecting, correcting, or removing corrupt or inaccurate data retrieved from different source systems Data Mart - Answer- A data warehouse that is limited in scope, customized for the decision support needs of a particular end-user group Decision Support Systems (DSSs) - Answer- Analyze structured data and support decision making Interactive decision aid that uses models to manipulate data What-If Analysis - Answer- Allows users to make hypothetical changes to the data associated with a problem and observe how these changes influence the results Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) - Answer- The process of quickly conducting complex, multidimensional analyses of data stored in a database that is optimized for retrieval, typically using graphical software tools OLAP Server - Answer- Chief component of an OLAP system that understands how data are organized in the database and has special functions for analyzing the data In-Memory Computing - Answer- Data are stored in a computer's main memory rather than on a comparatively slow hard drive, removing the bottlenecks associated with reading and writing data Measures - Answer- Facts, the values or number the user wants to analyze Dimensions - Answer- Provide a way to summarize the data, such as region, time or product line Drill Down - Answer- Organized dimensions by hierarchy from greatest to least Roll Up - Answer- Organized dimensions by hierarchy from least to greatest OLAP Cube - Answer- A data structure allowing for multiple dimensions to be added to a traditional two-dimensional table Slicing and Dicing - Answer- Analyzing data on subsets of the dimensions Visualization - Answer- Refers to the display of complex data relationships using a variety of graphical methods, enabling managers to quickly grasp the results of the analyses Visual Analytics (Visual Data Discovery) - Answer- The combination of various analyses techniques and interactive visualization to solve complex problems Digital Dashboards - Answer- Commonly used to visually present key performance indicators and other summary information used by managers and executives to make decisions Data Mining - Answer- Discovering hidden predictive relationships in the data Algorithm - Answer- The step-by-step procedures used to make a calculation or perform some type of computer-based process Data Reduction - Answer- Reduces the complexity of the data to be analyzed by rolling up the data cube to the smallest level of aggregation needed, reducing the dimensionality, or dividing continuous measures into discrete intervals Association Discovery - Answer- A technique used to find associations or correlations among sets of items Sequence Discovery - Answer- Used to discover associations over time Clustering - Answer- The process of grouping related records together on the basis of having similar values for attributes, thus finding structure in the data Classification - Answer- Used when the groups are known beforehand, and records are segmented in to these classes Text Mining - Answer- Refers to the use of analytical techniques for extracting information from textual documents Web Content Mining - Answer- Refers to extracting textual information from web documents Sentiment Analysis - Answer- Learn about customers' thoughts, feelings, and emotions Competitive Intelligence - Answer- gaining information about one's competitors' activities so that you can anticipate their moves and react appropriately Web Usage Mining (Web Analytics) - Answer- Used by organizations to determine patterns in customers' usage data, such as how users navigate through the site or how much time they spend on different pages Clickstream Data - Answer- Recording of a user's path through a website Stickiness - Answer- Ability to track and keep visitors Machine Learning - Answer- Branch of artificial intelligence that allows systems to learn by identifying meaningful patterns when processing massive amounts of structure or unstructured data Neural Networks - Answer- Composed of a network of processing elements that work in parallel to complete a task, attempt to approximate the functioning of the human brain and can learn by example Fuzzy Logic - Answer- Allow using approximations or subjective values in order to handle situations what information about a problem is incomplete or imprecise Predictive Modeling - Answer- Building explanatory models which help understand the data, identify trends, or predict business outcomes Artificial Intelligence (AI) - Answer- The science of enabling information technologies, software, hardware, networks, and so on to stimulate human intelligence, such as reasoning and learning, as well as gaining sensing capabilities, such as seeing, hearing, or feeling Intelligent Systems - Answer- Censors, software, and computers embedded in machines and devices emulate and enhance human capabilities Intelligent Agent (Agent or Bot) - Answer- A program that works in the background to provide some service when a specific event occurs User Agents - Answer- Automatically perform a task for a user, such as automatically sending a report or filling out routine information