BUSINESS ANALYTICS TEST BANK EXAM
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
course objectives - ANS-To gain an understanding of how managers use business analytics to formulate
& solve business problems to support managerial decision making
To become familiar with the processes needed to develop, report, and analyze business data
To give you the skills to solve complex business problems using analytical techniques and tools on
spreadsheets
What do we use each for?
Excel
Tableau
XLMiner
Solver - ANS-Excel + Tableau- Data visualization
XLMiner - Data mining
Solver - Optimization
Analytics - ANS-Process of transforming data into actions through analysis
That is, transforming data into useful knowledge to solve business problems
process may be initiated by the desire to address specific problems or the need to explore and learn
from existing data
why Is analytics important? - ANS-Data is everywhere!!
Every sector
Every economy
Every organization
The US alone faces a shortage of 1.5 Million analysts to analyze big data and make decisions based on
their findings
90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last - ANS-2 years
potential value from utilizing data - ANS-could be more than $300 Billion in value every year
it is the core of enterprise, companies make more money when using data analytics
4 types of business analytics - ANS-descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, prescriptive
, descriptive analytics - ANS-preliminary stage of data processing that creates a summary of historical
data to yield useful information and possibly prepare the data for further analysis.
(What happened?)
data visualization, dash boards
diagnostic analytics - ANS-used for discovery or to determine why something happened. For example,
for a social media marketing campaign, you can use descriptive analytics to assess the number of posts,
mentions, followers, fans, page views, reviews, pins, etc. There can be thousands of online mentions
that can be distilled into a single view to see what worked in your past campaigns and what didn't
(why did it happen?) data modeling and trend lines
Prescriptive Analytics - ANS-really valuable, but largely not used. Where big data analytics in general
sheds light on a subject, prescriptive analytics gives you a laser-like focus to answer specific questions
(how can we make it happen) optimization and simulation ( imitation of the operation of a real-world
process )
Predictive Analytics - ANS-use big data to identify past patterns to predict the future. For example, some
companies are using predictive analytics for sales lead scoring. Some companies have gone one step
further use predictive analytics for the entire sales process, analyzing lead source, number of
communications, types of communications, social media, documents, CRM data, etc. Properly tuned
predictive analytics can be used to support sales, marketing, or for other types of complex forecasts.
(what will happen) data mining n predictive forecasting
data - ANS-anything that gives you information
example of descriptive & diagnostic analytics - ANS-Obtain and clean 400,000 transactions at an
electronics retailer over 5 years
Data Modeling, Visualization, Trend lines
example of predictive analytics - ANS-Model the probability a customer purchases product x in their next
transaction
Data Mining, Predictive Models
example of prescriptive analytics - ANS-Optimization - determine which products to promote in real
time to a customer to maximize retailer margin (most effective use of a situation/resource)
Simulation - simulate the retail store to evaluate the how the new real time promo policy will perform
over time
real life examples of use of data analytics - ANS-1. Starbucks- uses it to decide where to open locations,
which products they should offer in grocery stores, which drinks are bestsellers
2. harrah's casino uses predictive analytics to develop marketing programs that encourage customers to
return, gold members can go to dinner for cheaper, not have to wait as long
3. Netflix uses Analytics To Select Movies, Create Content, and Make Multimillion Dollar Decisions
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
course objectives - ANS-To gain an understanding of how managers use business analytics to formulate
& solve business problems to support managerial decision making
To become familiar with the processes needed to develop, report, and analyze business data
To give you the skills to solve complex business problems using analytical techniques and tools on
spreadsheets
What do we use each for?
Excel
Tableau
XLMiner
Solver - ANS-Excel + Tableau- Data visualization
XLMiner - Data mining
Solver - Optimization
Analytics - ANS-Process of transforming data into actions through analysis
That is, transforming data into useful knowledge to solve business problems
process may be initiated by the desire to address specific problems or the need to explore and learn
from existing data
why Is analytics important? - ANS-Data is everywhere!!
Every sector
Every economy
Every organization
The US alone faces a shortage of 1.5 Million analysts to analyze big data and make decisions based on
their findings
90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last - ANS-2 years
potential value from utilizing data - ANS-could be more than $300 Billion in value every year
it is the core of enterprise, companies make more money when using data analytics
4 types of business analytics - ANS-descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, prescriptive
, descriptive analytics - ANS-preliminary stage of data processing that creates a summary of historical
data to yield useful information and possibly prepare the data for further analysis.
(What happened?)
data visualization, dash boards
diagnostic analytics - ANS-used for discovery or to determine why something happened. For example,
for a social media marketing campaign, you can use descriptive analytics to assess the number of posts,
mentions, followers, fans, page views, reviews, pins, etc. There can be thousands of online mentions
that can be distilled into a single view to see what worked in your past campaigns and what didn't
(why did it happen?) data modeling and trend lines
Prescriptive Analytics - ANS-really valuable, but largely not used. Where big data analytics in general
sheds light on a subject, prescriptive analytics gives you a laser-like focus to answer specific questions
(how can we make it happen) optimization and simulation ( imitation of the operation of a real-world
process )
Predictive Analytics - ANS-use big data to identify past patterns to predict the future. For example, some
companies are using predictive analytics for sales lead scoring. Some companies have gone one step
further use predictive analytics for the entire sales process, analyzing lead source, number of
communications, types of communications, social media, documents, CRM data, etc. Properly tuned
predictive analytics can be used to support sales, marketing, or for other types of complex forecasts.
(what will happen) data mining n predictive forecasting
data - ANS-anything that gives you information
example of descriptive & diagnostic analytics - ANS-Obtain and clean 400,000 transactions at an
electronics retailer over 5 years
Data Modeling, Visualization, Trend lines
example of predictive analytics - ANS-Model the probability a customer purchases product x in their next
transaction
Data Mining, Predictive Models
example of prescriptive analytics - ANS-Optimization - determine which products to promote in real
time to a customer to maximize retailer margin (most effective use of a situation/resource)
Simulation - simulate the retail store to evaluate the how the new real time promo policy will perform
over time
real life examples of use of data analytics - ANS-1. Starbucks- uses it to decide where to open locations,
which products they should offer in grocery stores, which drinks are bestsellers
2. harrah's casino uses predictive analytics to develop marketing programs that encourage customers to
return, gold members can go to dinner for cheaper, not have to wait as long
3. Netflix uses Analytics To Select Movies, Create Content, and Make Multimillion Dollar Decisions
