Business analytics ch 1, 2, 4, 8, 10

Forecast error _____.

is associated with measuring forecast accuracy

The letter grades (A, B, C, D, F) of business analysis students are recorded by a professor. This variable's classification _____.

is categorical data

Which of the following is a logical function that will add values in multiple ranges that meet multiple criteria?

SUMIF

A time series plot of a period of time (quarterly) versus quarterly sales (in $1,000s) is shown below. Which of the following data patterns best describes the scenario shown?

Seasonal pattern and linear trend

_____ are used in the pharmaceutical industry to assess the risk of introducing a new drug.

Simulations

Advanced analytics generally refers to _____.

predictive and prescriptive analytics

In the financial sector, _____ are used to construct financial instruments such as derivatives.

predictive models

*_____ analytics use techniques that take input data and yield a best course of action.

prescriptive

In the spectrum of business analytics, which is the most complex?

prescriptive

_____ analytics use techniques that take input data and yield a best course of action.

prescriptive

An initial estimate of the probabilities of events is a _____ probability.

prior

A _____ describes the range and relative likelihood of all possible values for a random variable.

probability distribution for a random variable

A joint probability is the _____.

probability of the intersection of two events

The amount of time taken by each of 10 students in a class to complete an exam is an example of what type of data?

quantitative data

The act of collecting data that are representative of the population data is called _____.

random sampling

The COUNTIF function takes two arguments. What are they (in proper order)?

range of cells to check and logical condition

Which of the following gives the proportion of items in each bin?

relative frequency

All of the following are examples of discrete random variables except _____.

time

A set of observations on a variable measured at successive points in time or over successive periods of time constitute a _____.

time series

Data collected from several entities over a period of time (minutes, hours, days, etc.) are called _____.

time series data

Simulation optimization helps _____.

to find good decisions in highly complex and highly uncertain settings.

A light bulb manufacturer uses descriptive analytics _____.

to present supply chain to managers visually.

The defined range for a VLOOKUP formula must have at least ________ rows or columns.

two

The event containing the outcomes belonging to A or B or both is the _____ of A and B.

union

The moving averages method refers to a forecasting method that _____.

uses the average of the most recent data values in the time series as the forecast for the next period

A quantity of interest that can take on different values is known as a(n) _____.

variable

The difference in a variable measured over observations (time, customers, items, etc.) is known as _____.

variation

A health conscious student faithfully wears a device that tracks his steps. Suppose that the distribution of the number of steps he takes is normally distributed with a mean of 10,000 and a standard deviation of 1,500 steps. How many steps would he have to take to make the cut for the top 5% for his distribution? Hint: use the NORM.INV function in excel and remember that 95% of the values will fall below the top 5%.

12,467

Select the histogram that is moderately skewed right.

B

_____ uses a weighted average of past time series values as the forecast.

Exponential smoothing

Which statement is true about mutually exclusive events?

If events A and B cannot occur at the same time, they are called mutually exclusive.

In a normal distribution, which is greater, the mean or the median?

Neither the mean or the median (they are equal)

Which of the following is not present in a time series?

Operational variations

Which of the following analytical techniques helps us arrive at the best decision?

Prescriptive analytics

Trend refers to _____.

The long-run shift or movement in the time series observable over several periods of time.

Which of the following statements is the objective of the moving averages and exponential smoothing methods?

To smooth out random fluctuations in the time series

Utility theory is the study of the _____ or relative desirability of a particular outcome that reflects the decision maker's attitude toward a collection of factors, such as profit, loss, and risk.

Total worth

In order to manage an organization's human resource activities, such as hiring employees, tracking, and influencing employee retention, HR personnel use

descriptive and predictive analytics

The mean absolute error, mean squared error, and mean absolute percentage error are all methods to measure the accuracy of a forecast. These methods measure forecast accuracy by _____.

determining how well a particular forecasting method is able to reproduce the time series data that are already available

The value of an independent variable from the prior period is referred to as a _____.

lagged variable.

Data sets commonly include observations with missing values for one or more variables. In some cases missing data naturally occur; these are called _____.

legitimately missing data

Which one of the following is used in predictive analytics?

linear regression

Which of the following is NOT possible with VLOOKUP?

look up values located in a column to the left of the column that contains the lookup value

A _____ decision is concerned with how the organization should achieve the goals and objectives set by its strategy.

tactical decision

Compute the relative frequency for students who earned a C shown in the table of grades below. ​ Grades Number of Students A 10 B 31 C 36 D 6 83

0.43

The newest model of smart car is supposed to get excellent gas mileage. A thorough study showed that gas mileage (measured in miles per gallon) is normally distributed with a mean of 75 miles per gallon and a standard deviation of 10 miles per gallon. What is the probability that, if driven normally, the car will get 100 miles per gallon or better? Hint: use the NORM.DIST function in Excel.

0.6%

What is the total area under the normal distribution curve?

1

A survey of 100 random high school students finds that 85 students watched the Super Bowl, 25 students watched the Stanley Cup Finals, and 20 students watched both games. How many students did not watch either game?

10

The College Board originally scaled SAT scores so that the scores for each section were approximately normally distributed with a mean of 500 and a standard deviation of 100. Assuming scores follow a bell-shaped distribution, use the empirical rule to find the percentage of students who scored less than 400.

16%

A health conscious student faithfully wears a device that tracks his steps. Suppose that the distribution of the number of steps he takes in a day is normally distributed with a mean of 10,000 and a standard deviation of 1,500 steps. What percent of the days does he exceed 13,000 steps? Hint: use the NORM.DIST function in Excel

2.28%

If the forecasted value of the time series variable for period 2 is 22.5 and the actual value observed for period 2 is 25, what is the forecast error in period 2?

2.5

The College Board originally scaled SAT scores so that the scores for each section were approximately normally distributed with a mean of 500 and a standard deviation of 100. Assuming scores follow a bell-shaped distribution, use the empirical rule to find the percentage of students who scored greater than 700.

2.5%

Compute the median of the following data. 32, 41, 36, 24, 29, 30, 40, 22, 25, 37

31

Suppose for a particular week, the forecasted sales were $4,000. The actual sales were $3,000. What is the value of the mean absolute percentage error?

33.3%

Below is the data for the number of days that it took Wyche Accounting to perform audits in the last quarter of last year. ​ 56, 42, 37, 29, 45, 51, 30, 25, 34, 57 What is the median number of days that it took Wyche Accounting to perform audits in the last quarter of last year?

39.5

Below is a histogram for the number of days that it took Wyche Accounting to perform audits in the last quarter of last year. What is the bin size for the histogram?

4

Compute the mean of the following data. 56, 42, 37, 29, 45, 51, 30, 25, 34, 57

40.6

For the standard normal probability distribution, what percent of the curve lies to the left of the mean?

50%

For data having a bell-shaped distribution, approximately _____ percent of the data values will be within one standard deviation of the mean.

68

The Excel operator for "not equal to" is

< >

In a survey of patients in a local hospital, 62.42% of the respondents indicated that the health care providers needed to spend more time with each patient. Who makes up the population?

All patients in a local hospital

A manager of a fast food restaurant wants the drive-thru employee to ask every fifth customer if he or she is satisfied with the service. Who makes up the sample?

All survey respondents

In a survey of patients in a local hospital, 62.42% of the respondents indicated that the health care providers needed to spend more time with each patient. Who makes up the sample?

All survey respondents

Which graph represents a negative linear relationship between x and y?

C

A logical function that counts the cells that meet specific criteria in a specified range is ________.

COUNTIF

If a column of data holds the marital status for members of a gym, the ________ function could be used to determine how many members are "single".

COUNTIF

Which is not true regarding trend patterns?

Can result when business conditions shift to a new level at some point in time

Which of the following best exemplifies big data?

Cellphone owners around the world generate vast amounts of data by calling, texting, tweeting, and browsing the Web on a daily basis.

A variable that can only take on specific numeric values is called a _____.

Discrete random variable

_____ is the most critical step of the decision-making process.

Identifying and defining the problem

Which of the following is true of the exponential smoothing coefficient?

It is chosen as the value that minimizes a selected measure of forecast accuracy such as the mean squared error.

A time series plot of a period of time (in years) versus sales (in thousands of dollars) is shown below. Which of the following data patterns best describes the scenario shown?

Linear trend pattern

________ functions search for a corresponding value in a defined range of cells located in another part of the workbook.

Lookup

___________ functions look up a value in a defined range of cells located in another part of the corresponding workbook to find a value.

Lookup

Which Excel command will return all modes when more than one mode exists?

MODE.MULT

_____ refers to a programming model used within Hadoop that performs the two major steps for which it is named: the map step and the reduce step.

MapReduce

If a z-score is zero, then the corresponding x-value must be equal to the _____.

Mean

Which statement is NOT true of influence diagrams?

The influence diagram is a means of gaining influence over competitors.

Which of the following is a discrete random variable?

The number of times a student guesses the answers to questions on a certain test

Which of the following is not a characteristic of the normal probability distribution?

The standard deviation must be 1.

A time series plot of a period of time (in weeks) versus sales (in 1,000's of gallons) is shown below. Which of the following data patterns best describes the scenario shown?

Time series with a horizontal pattern

In a make-versus-buy decision, companies have to decide whether they should manufacture a product or outsource its production to another firm.

True

_____ assigns values to outcomes based on the decision maker's attitude toward risk, loss, and other factors.

Utility Theory

_____assigns values to outcomes based on the decision maker's attitude toward risk, loss, and other factors.

Utility theory

An Excel function that searches values in a table array arranged in columns is the ______________ function.

VLOOKUP

If you have defined a two-column range of cells containing names and phone numbers, you would use the ________ function to match a name with a number.

VLOOKUP

A _____ determines how far a particular value is from the mean relative to the data set's standard deviation.

Z-score

The moving averages and exponential smoothing methods are appropriate for a time series exhibiting _____.

a horizontal pattern

A one-way data table summarizes

a single input's impact on the output of interest.

A better understanding of consumer behavior through analytics directly leads to _____.

better pricing strategies

The correlation coefficient will always take values _____.

between -1 and +1

Which of the following graphs provides information on outliers and IQR of a data set?

box plot

An experiment consists of determining the speed of automobiles on a highway by the use of radar equipment. The random variable in this experiment is a _____.

continuous random variable

_____ are collected from several entities at the same point in time.

cross-sectional data

Corporate-level managers use ______ to summarize sales by region, current inventory levels, and other company-wide metrics all in a single screen.

data dashboards

A retail store owner offers a discount on product A and predicts that the customers would purchase products B and C in addition to product A. Identify the technique used to make such a prediction.

data mining

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service uses _____ to identify patterns that distinguish questionable annual personal income tax filings.

data mining

The extraction of information on the number of shipments, how much was included in each shipment, the date each shipment was sent, and so on from the manufacturing plant's database exemplifies _____

data queries.

Optimization models can be used to _____.

decide on how to invest cash received from insurance policies

*When a decision maker is faced with several alternatives and an uncertain set of future events, s/he uses _____ to develop an optimal strategy.

decision analysis

When a decision maker is faced with several alternatives and an uncertain set of future events, s/he uses _____ to develop an optimal strategy.

decision analysis

Data dashboards are a type of _____analytics.

descriptive

*In order to manage an organization's human resource activities, such as hiring employees, tracking, and influencing employee retention, HR personnel use

descriptive and predictive analytics

In a(n) _____, one or more variables are identified and controlled or manipulated so that data can be obtained about how they influence the variable of interest identified first.

experimental study

You would ________ a table if you wanted to display only data that matches specific criteria.

filter

A summary of data that shows the number of observations in each of several nonoverlapping bins is called a(n) _____.

frequency distribution

A method to find a specific value in a cell by adjusting the value of another cell is

goal seek

_________ can be used to determine the maximum loan amount with payments that stay within your budget.

goal seek

Which of the following is not an approach to making decisions?

guess and check

Tactical decisions are concerned with _____.

how the organization should achieve the goals and objectives by its strategy

A(n) _______ is a visual representation that shows which entities affect others in a model.

influence diagram

The process of _____ might be used to determine the value of the smoothing constant that minimizes the mean squared error.

nonlinear optimization

In the moving averages method, the order k determines the _____.

number of time series values under consideration

Probability is the _____.

numerical measure of the likelihood that an event will occur

A set of values corresponding to a set of variables is defined as a(n) _____.

observation

The data collected from the customers in restaurants about the quality of food is an example of a(n) _____.

observational study

With reference to a spreadsheet model, an uncontrollable model input is known as a __________.

parameter

A forecast is defined as a(n) ______.

prediction of future values of a time series

A forecast that helps direct police officers to areas where crimes are likely to occur based on past data is an example of _____.

predictive analytics

Data-driven decision making tends to decrease a firm's _____.

risk

The _____ is a point estimate of the population mean for the variable of interest.

sample mean

For causal modeling, _____ are used to detect linear or nonlinear relationships between the independent and dependent variables.

scatter charts

A time series that shows a recurring pattern over one year or less is said to follow a _____.

seasonal pattern

With reference to time series data patterns, a cyclical pattern is the component of the time series that _____.

shows a periodic pattern lasting more than one year

Identify the shape of the distribution in the figure below.

skewed right

VLOOKUP assumes that the first column of the table is

sorted in ascending order

Picks and Axes Inc. is an Internet-based retail seller of hiking boots and mountaineering gear. The company decides to open retail stores across the major areas of the city to help complement its Internet-based strategy. This activity would be categorized as a(n) _____.

strategic decision

The decisions concerning an organization's goals and future plans are called _____.

strategic decisions

Sample space is _____.

the collection of all possible outcomes

*All the events in the sample space that are not part of the specified event are called _____.

the complement of the event

All the events in the sample space that are not part of the specified event are called _____.

the complement of the event

The center of a normal curve is _____.

the mean of the distribution

If the covariance between two variables is near 0, it implies that ______.

the variables are not linearly related

Goal seek is part of a suite of data tools used for

what-if analysis.

The process of changing the values in cells to see how those changes affect the outcome of formulas on a worksheet is called

what-if analysis.

Using various interest rates to determine the amount of loan payments is an example of

what-if analysis.