Analytics and BI

What is the primary goal of business intelligence (BI)?

• To store large amounts of raw data

• To provide actionable insights from data

• To design complex algorithms

• To replace human decision-making

Answer explanation

The main purpose of Business Intelligence (BI) is to transform data into actionable insights that support better strategic, tactical, and operational decision-making.

Which type of analytics focuses on predicting future trends?

• Descriptive analytics

• Diagnostic analytics

• Predictive analytics

• Prescriptive analytics

Answer explanation

The main purpose of Predictive Analytics is to use historical data, statistical algorithms, and machine learning techniques to forecast future outcomes and trends.

Which tool is most commonly associated with data visualization?

• SQL Server

• Apache Spark

• Power BI

• Excel

Answer explanation

Power BI is one of the most widely used tools for data visualization because it offers an intuitive interface, seamless integration with various data sources (including Excel and SQL), powerful analytics capabilities, and interactive dashboards that support real-time decision-making.

What does prescriptive analytics primarily provide?

• Historical summaries

• Recommendations for action

• Data storage solutions

• Raw data collection

Answer explanation

Prescriptive analytics primarily provides recommendations on the best course of action by analyzing data, predicting outcomes, and suggesting decision options to achieve desired results.

What is the purpose of a dashboard in BI?

• To store raw data

• To display key performance indicators (KPIs)

• To run machine learning models

• To clean unstructured data

Answer explanation

The purpose of a dashboard in Business Intelligence (BI) is to visually present key performance indicators (KPIs), trends, and insights in an interactive and easy-to-understand format to support timely and informed decision-making.

Which of these is an example of unstructured data?

• Sales figures in a spreadsheet

• Customer reviews on a website

• Employee ID numbers

• Inventory counts

Answer explanation

An example of unstructured data is customer reviews on a website because they consist of free-form text that doesn’t follow a predefined data model.

What is a key difference between BI and analytics?

• BI focuses on past data, analytics on future predictions

• BI uses only structured data, analytics uses none

• BI is free, analytics is expensive

• BI avoids dashboards, analytics relies on them

Answer explanation

Because Business Intelligence primarily helps understand historical performance, while analytics often involves forecasting and future decision-making.

What is the first step in a typical analytics project?

• Visualize the data

• Define the business problem

• Collect random datasets

• Choose a software tool

Answer explanation

Clearly understanding and defining the problem ensures that the analytics efforts are focused, relevant, and aligned with the desired outcomes, preventing wasted time and resources.

Which chart type is best for showing trends over time in Power BI?

• Pie chart

• Bar chart

• Line chart

• Scatter chart

Answer explanation

Line charts are ideal for visualizing continuous data trends, like sales over months.

In Power BI, where do you go to connect to a new data source?

• Report View

• Data View

• Home tab > Get Data

• Model View > Relationships

Answer explanation

The "Get Data" option in the Home tab is the starting point for importing data into Power BI.