Chapter 1 Quiz

What are the four major components of a Business Intelligence (BI) system?

1. A data warehouse, with its source data 2. Business analytics, a collection of tools for manipulating, mining, and analyzing the data in the data warehouse 3. Business performance management (BPM) for monitoring and analyzing performance 4. A user interface (e.g., a dashboard)

In what decade did disjointed information systems begin to be integrated?

1980's

Relational databases began to be used in the

1980s

Today, many vendors offer diversified tools, some of which are completely preprogrammed (called shells). How are these shells utilized?

All a user needs to do is insert the numbers.

Why is data alone worthless?

Alone, data is worthless because it does not provide business value. To provide business value, it has to be analyzed.

How does Amazon.com use predictive analytics to respond to product searches by the customer?

Amazon uses clustering algorithms to segment customers into different clusters to be able to target specific promotions to them. The company also uses association mining techniques to estimate relationships between different purchasing behaviors. That is, if a customer buys one product, what else is the customer likely to purchase? That helps Amazon recommend or promote related products. For example, any product search on Amazon.com results in the retailer also suggesting other similar products that may interest a customer.

Describe and define Big Data. Why is a search engine a Big Data application?

Big data is data that cannot be stored in a single storage unit. Typically , big data refers to data that comes in many different forms : structured , unstructured etc . Search engines are a big data application because they need to search and index billions of web pages to give relevant search results.

________ cycle times are now extremely compressed, faster, and more informed across industries.

Business

Which of the following is an umbrella term that combines architectures, tools, databases, analytical tools, applications, and methodologies?

Business Intelligence

________ is an umbrella term that combines architectures, tools, databases, analytical tools, applications, and methodologies.

Business Intelligence

How are enterprise resources planning (ERP) systems related to supply chain management (SCM) systems?

Complementary Systems

The user interface of a BI system is often referred to as a(n) ________.

Dashboard

A(n) ________ is a major component of a Business Intelligence (BI) system that holds source data.

Data Warehouse

________ providers focus on providing technology and services aimed toward integrating data from multiple sources.

Data Warehouse

________ analytics help managers understand current events in the organization including causes, trends, and patterns.

Descriptive

Describe the three major subsets of the Analytics Focused Software Developers portion of the Analytics Ecosystem.

Descriptive : Programs that describe what is currently happening or what has happened in the past Predictive : Statistical (mathematical) algorithms that predict what will happen based on prior information / data. Prescriptive : Makes suggestions on action based on prior data.

List and describe three levels or categories of analytics that are most often viewed as sequential and independent, but also occasionally seen as overlapping.

Descriptive: What is currently happening or was happening in the business Predictive: What might happen given what has already happened Prescriptive: What to do given what has already happened Describe and define Big Data.

Different types of players are identified and described in the analytics ________.

Ecosystem

With ________, all the data from every corner of the enterprise is collected and integrated into a consistent schema so that every part of the organization has access to the single version of the truth when and where needed.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

The need for more versatile reporting than what was available in 1980s era ERP systems led to the development of what type of system?

Executive Information Systems

BI represents a bold new paradigm in which the company's business strategy must be aligned to its business intelligence analysis initiatives.

False

Business intelligence (BI) is a specific term that describes architectures and tools only.

False

Computerized support is only used for organizational decisions that are responses to external pressures, not for taking advantage of opportunities.

False

Data generation is a precursor, and is not included in the analytics ecosystem.

False

Decision support system (DSS) and management information system (MIS) have precise definitions agreed to by practitioners.

False

Demands for instant, on-demand access to dispersed information decrease as firms successfully integrate BI into their operations.

False

Due to industry consolidation, the analytics ecosystem consists of only a handful of players across several functional areas.

False

Information systems that support such transactions as ATM withdrawals, bank deposits, and cash register scans at the grocery store represent transaction processing, a critical branch of BI.

False

Major commercial business intelligence (BI) products and services were well established in the early 1970s.

False

Managing information on operations, customers, internal procedures and employee interactions is the domain of cognitive science.

False

Successful BI is a tool for the information systems department, but is not exposed to the larger organization.

False

The growth in hardware, software, and network capacities has had little impact on modern BI innovations.

False

The use of dashboards and data visualizations is seldom effective in identifying issues in organizations, as demonstrated by the Silvaris Corporation Case Study.

False

The filing system developed by Google to handle Big Data storage challenges is known as the ________ Distributed File System.

Hadoop

In the Opening Vignette on Sports Analytics, what type of modeling was used to predict offensive tactics?

Heat Maps

As the number of potential BI applications increases, the need to justify and prioritize them arises. This is not an easy task due to the large number of ________ benefits.

Intangible

Software monitors referred to as ________ can be placed on a separate server in the network and use event- and process-based approaches to measure and monitor operational processes.

Intelligent Agents

List four possible analytics applications in the retail value chain.

Inventory Optimization Price Elasticity • Market Basket Analysis • Shopper Insight • Customer Churn Analysis • Channel Analysis • New Store Analysis • Store Layout • Video Analytics

The programing algorithm developed by Google to handle Big Data computational challenges is known as ________.

MapReduce

________ providers focus on bringing all the data stores into an enterprise-wide platform.

Middleware

Business applications can be programmed to act on what real-time BI systems discover. Describe two approaches to the implementation of real-time BI.

One approach to real-time BI Uses the DW model of traditional BI systems. In this case , products from innovative BI Platform providers provide a service oriented near real time solution that populates the DW much faster The second approach is commonly called BAM (business activity management ) it bypasses the DW entirely and uses web services or other monitoring means to discover key business events.

________ analytics help managers understand probable future outcomes.

Predictive

________ analytics help managers make decisions to achieve the best performance in the future.

Prescriptive

Which of the following statements about Big Data is true?

Pure Big Data systems do not involve fault tolerance.

The competitive imperatives for BI include all of the following EXCEPT

Right user

Which of the following is NOT an example of transaction processing?

Sales Report

What is the intent of the analysis of data that is stored in a data warehouse?

The intent of the analysis of data that is stored in a data warehouse is to analyze the data in a historical fashion. This makes it easier to analyze data over a specific period.

What storage system and processing algorithm were developed by Google for Big Data?

The storage system is known as Hadoop , and the processing algorithm is known as MapReduce .

In the Opening Vignette on Sports Analytics, what was adjusted to drive one-time ticket sales?

Ticket Prices

During the early days of analytics, data was often obtained from the domain experts using manual processes to build mathematical or knowledge-based models.

True

In the 2000s, the DW-driven DSSs began to be called BI systems.

True

Managing data warehouses requires special methods, including parallel computing and/or Hadoop/Spark.

True

Many business users in the 1980s referred to their mainframes as "the black hole," because all the information went into it, but little ever came back and ad hoc real-time querying was virtually impossible.

True

The use of statistics in baseball by the Oakland Athletics, as described in the Moneyball case study, is an example of the effectiveness of prescriptive analytics.

True

Traditional BI systems use a large volume of static data that has been extracted, cleansed, and loaded into a data warehouse to produce reports and analyses.

True

A(n) ________ is a major component of a Business Intelligence (BI) system that is often browser based and often presents a portal or dashboard.

User Interface

The Google search engine is an example of Big Data in that it has to search and index billions of ________ in fractions of a second for each search.

Web Pages

Online transaction processing (OLTP) systems handle a company's routine ongoing business. In contrast, a data warehouse is typically

a distinct system that provides storage for data that will be made use of in analysis.

Fundamental reasons for investing in BI must be ________ with the company's business strategy.

aligned

Data warehouses are intended to work with informational data used for online ________ processing systems.

analytical

Organizations using BI systems are typically seeking to ________ the gap between the operational data and strategic objectives has become more pressing.

close

Business applications have moved from transaction processing and monitoring to other activities. Which of the following is NOT one of those activities?

data monitoring

BI applications must be integrated with

databases, legacy systems, and enterprise systems. (All of the above)

The very design that makes an OLTP system efficient for transaction processing makes it inefficient for

end-user ad hoc reports, queries, and analysis.

Which of the following developments is NOT contributing to facilitating growth of decision support and analytics?

locally concentrated workforces

What type of analytics seeks to determine what is likely to happen in the future?

predictive

What type of analytics seeks to recognize what is going on as well as the likely forecast and make decisions to achieve the best performance possible?

prescriptive

What has caused the growth of the demand for instant, on-demand access to dispersed information?

the more pressing need to close the gap between the operational data and strategic objectives

Big Data often involves a form of distributed storage and processing using Hadoop and MapReduce. One reason for this is

the processing power needed for the centralized model would overload a single computer.

Computer applications have moved from transaction processing and monitoring activities to problem analysis and solution applications.

true