ISYE 6501 WEEK 1 HOMEWORK – SAMPLE SOLUTIONS

ISYE 6501 WEEK 1 HOMEWORK – SAMPLE SOLUTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE These homework solutions show multiple approaches and some optional extensions for most of the questions in the assignment. You don’t need to submit all this in your assignments; they’re included here just to help you learn more – because remember, the main goal of the homework assignments, and of the entire course, is to help you learn as much as you can, and develop your analytics skills as much as possible! Question 1 Describe a situation or problem from your job, everyday life, current events, etc., for which a classification model would be appropriate. List some (up to 5) predictors that you might use. One possible answer: Being students at Georgia Tech, the Teaching Assistants for the course suggested the following example. A college admissions officer has a large pool of applicants must decide who will make up the next incoming class. The applicants must be put into different categories – admit, waitlist, and deny – so a classification model is appropriate. Some common factors used in college admissions classification are high school GPA, rank in high school class, SAT and/or ACT score, number of advanced placement courses taken, quality of written essay(s), quality of letters of recommendation, and quantity and depth of extracurricular activities. If the goal of the model was to automate a process to make decisions that are similar to those made in the past, then previous admit/waitlist/deny decisions could be used as the response. Alternatively, if the goal of the model was to make better admissions decisions, then a different