Data Analysis

What is data?

I. Computer readable information

II. Information collected about the physical world

III. Programs that process images

IV. Graphs and charts

• I, II, III, IV

• I, II

• I, II, IV

• II, IV

News reporting agencies often want to find the public's opinion on current events. One particular agency is considering two different strategies to collect this data by collecting responses to online surveys. The two strategies are outlined below.

Strategy One: 1. Uses a database to store all of the survey responses

2. Stores some data as text and some data as numbers

3. Will track extra information about the survey taker that won't be publicly visible

Strategy Two 1. Uses a single spreadsheet to store all of the survey responses

2. Stores all data as numbers

3. Will not track any information other than the survey responses

Which of the following statements is the most accurate comparison of these strategies?

• Strategy One will make it easier to sort and filter the data, while Strategy Two will make it easier to graph the data

• Strategy One will cause problems because of the mixed data types, while Strategy Two will make it very easy to find specific data.

• Strategy One will allow the agency to conclude more about the public's opinion because it tracks extra metadata, while Strategy Two will make it hard to find trends and access particular pieces of the data.

• Strategy One will require less cleaning and manipulation of the data, while Strategy Two will require a significant amount of extra computation to use the data.

Which of the following statements are true about using visualizations to display a dataset?

I. Visualizations are visually appealing, but don't help the viewer understand relationships that exist in the data

II. Visualizations like graphs, charts, or visualizations with pictures are useful for conveying information, while tables just filled with text are not useful.

III. Patterns that exist in the data can be found more easily by using a visualization.

• I and II

• II and III

• I, II, and III

• III only

Shown here is a line graph showing the stock prices for Twitter, Inc.

What is misleading about this visualization?

Source: Ryan McCready https://venngage.com/

• The graph makes it seem like the increase in stock prices are caused by the month that they are sold/bought.

• The graph is omitting data.

• The y-axis is upside down, so larger values are at the bottom and smaller values are at the top.

• The y-axis is truncated making the graph seem like it is increasing a lot more than it actually is.

Suppose you want to make a visualization that shows how many students bought certain quantities of candy from the vending machine during the month of September. Of the choices below, which chart would best convey this information to the person looking at the graph?

• Line chart

• Pie chart

• A map where the colors represent the number of candy bars bought

• Histogram