Business Intelligence Exam 1 Questions and Answers 2023

Definition of Business Intelligence - Answer- A broad category of applications, technologies and processes for gathering, storing, accessing, and analyzing data to help business users make better decisions 3 kinds of analytics - Answer- 1. descriptive 2. predictive 3. prescriptive Descriptive analytics answers what question? - Answer- What happened? predictive analytics answers what question? - Answer- what will happen? prescriptive analytics answers what question? - Answer- What should happen? Reports, dashboards and scorecards are used for which type of analytics? - Answer- descriptive regression and fraud detection is used for which type of analytics? - Answer- predictive Which analytic uses descriptive, predictive, and mathematical modeling to dynamically optimize a certain outcome? - Answer- prescriptive The practice of basing business decisions on data - Answer- data driven decision making The more data driven a firm is, the more ______ it is - Answer- productive 3 V's that characterize big data - Answer- 1. volume 2. variety 3. velocity associations that statistically robust but happen only by chance - Answer- spurious correlations __________ helps avoid spurious correlations - Answer- theory 3 criteria for causal relationships - Answer- 1. temporal precedence 2. covariation of the cause and effect 3. no alternative explanations cause must happen before the effect - Answer- temporal precedence the cause and effect must happen together - Answer- covariation of the cause and effect 4 Ingredients of a question - Answer- 1. subject 2. data 3. task 4. approach Referred to as the dependent or outcome measure (question) - Answer- the subject Referred to as the independent or predictor variable - Answer- the data Attempting to predict for each observation which class or category it belongs in (task type) - Answer- classification and class probability estimation Estimating or predicting a numerical value of some variable for that individual (task type) - Answer- regression identifying individuals who are similar based on data known about them (task type) - Answer- similarity matching grouping a set of individuals based on their similarity to one another, without a specific purpose (task type) - Answer- clustering finding associations between entities because they are frequently part of the same transaction (Task type) - Answer- co-occurence grouping Example of regression - Answer- predicting a stock price example of similarity matching - Answer- finding consumers similar to current customers example of clustering - Answer- market segmentation example of co-occurence grouping - Answer- grocery store products Problems in which the target outcome is known for each observation - Answer- supervised example of supervised problems - Answer- regression problems in which the target outcome is not known for each observation - Answer- unsupervised example of unsupervised problem - Answer- clustering a gathered body of facts - Answer- data what is the central thread of any activity? - Answer- data understanding the _________ of data is fundamental for proper and effective use of statistical skills - Answer- nautre 2 broad types of data - Answer- 1. qualitative (categorical) 2. quantitative (numerical) Data divided into 4 groups (NOIR) - Answer- 1. nominal 2. ordinal 3. interval 4. ratio name and count, categories without order or direction, use restricted to keeping track of people, objects and events (Type of data) - Answer- nominal examples of nominal data - Answer- college majors, marital status, party affiliation rank or order, places events in order, allows for setting up inequalities, no absolute value (type of data) - Answer- ordinal examples of ordinal data - Answer- letter grades, class year, difficulty setting no absolute zero, unique origin does not exist (Type of data) - Answer- interval examples of interval data - Answer- temperature in degrees or celsius, standardized test scores allows for forming quotients in addition to setting up inequalities and forming differences, all mathematical operations are possible, can have absolute or true zero, most precise data (type of data) - Answer- ratio data examples of ratio data - Answer- height, weight, age Numerical data can be either ___________ or __________ - Answer- discrete or continuous numerical data that can take any numerical value (height, weight, age) - Answer- continuous Numerical data that can take only certain values by a finite "jumps" (number of students in the class) - Answer- discrete Which data is more precise and more informative? (Discrete or continuous) - Answer- Continuous Which data is more time consuming to obtain? (Discrete or Continuous) - Answer- Continuous Methods of describing the characteristics of a data set - Answer- descriptive statistics 3 Key measures used to describe a data set - Answer- 1. measures of position 2. measures of spread 3. measures of shape Measure of position is also referred to as: - Answer- the central tendency or location measures Measure of spread is also referred to as: - Answer- variability or dispersion measures Most common measures of position - Answer- mean, median, mode Most commonly used statistic of position - Answer- mean the mean is highly susceptible to the influence of __________ - Answer- outliers Measure that refers to how the data deviates from the position measure - Answer- the spread 2 statistics by which we describe the spread of a data set: - Answer- 1. range 2. standard deviation The average distance of the data points from their own mean - Answer- standard deviation A low standard deviation indicates that the data points are: - Answer- clustered around the mean the difference between the highest and the lowest values - Answer- range Simplest measure of variability - Answer- range when can the range be misleading? - Answer- when the data is skewed or in the presence of outliers Types of shape - Answer- symmetrical or non-symmetrical unimodal or bimodal If the data is symmetrical, we may use the _______________ to measure the central tendency - Answer- mean or median if the data is skewed, what will be more appropriate to measure the central tendency? - Answer- median a data point is an _____________ if it is significantly greater or smaller than other data points in a data set - Answer- outlier Descriptive statistics involves _______, _________ and _______ the data so it can be easily understood - Answer- describing summarizing organizing an open-end, undirected search. Gain insight into the data, formulate hypotheses, begin extracting relevant information - Answer- exploration/explorative analysis directed search, verify or reject hypothesis - Answer- confirmation/confirmative analysis communicate and disseminate analysis results - Answer- presentation Humans can distinguish differences in line length, shape, orientation, size, placement on page, and color with ___________ cognitive processing effort - Answer- minimum ___________ offers an intuitive, visual-based interactive data exploration experience that customers rate highly, and that competitors, large and small, try to imitate - Answer- Tableau Pro to tableau - Answer- making analyses accessible and easy for the ordinary user Con to Tableau - Answer- cost of the software (Tableau) Contain qualitative values such as names, dates, or geographical data to categorize, segment, and reveal details in your data - Answer- dimensions contain numeric, quantitative values that you can measure. Can be aggregated or disaggregated - Answer- Measures Type of visual, best to use when there are only one or two important numbers you want to communicate - Answer- simple text Type of visual, visuals that we read, used when the data is better read than viewed. Good for comparing specific rows and columns - Answer- Table Type of visual, type of table where information in each cell is augmented by color which corresponds to relative magnitude of the numbers - Answer- Heatmap Type of visual, useful for showing the relationship between two variables - Answer- Scatterplot Type of visual, most commonly used to plot continuous data. Most useful when there is a meaningful relationship between observations - Answer- Line Type of visual, type of line gr