Free CBDA Sourcing and Analyzing Data Questions and Answers — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A business data analyst is working for a financial institution to analyze potential credit card fraud. The analyst has access to a large dataset of historical transactions. Which analytical approach would be MOST effective for identifying transactions that are likely to be fraudulent?
- Descriptive Analytics
- Diagnostic Analytics
- Predictive Analytics (Correct answer)
- Prescriptive Analytics
Correct answer: Predictive Analytics
Predictive analytics is the most effective approach here because it uses historical data to forecast future outcomes. By building a model based on past fraudulent and non-fraudulent transactions, the analyst can predict the probability that a new transaction is fraudulent. Descriptive analytics would only summarize past fraud, diagnostic would explain why it happened, and prescriptive would suggest actions to take, but prediction is the core need.
Question 2: A business analyst is tasked with understanding customer sentiment regarding a new product feature. They decide to collect data from social media platforms, online reviews, and customer support chat logs. This collection of data from various origins is best described as what?
- Data Warehousing
- Data Sourcing (Correct answer)
- Data Mining
- Data Modeling
Correct answer: Data Sourcing
Data sourcing is the process of identifying and gathering data from various internal and external sources to be used for a specific purpose, such as analysis. In this scenario, the analyst is actively gathering data from multiple places (social media, reviews, logs) to analyze customer sentiment.
Question 3: When planning data collection, a business data analyst determines that they need to use both internal sales records and external market trend reports. Which of the following is the primary reason for using multiple data sources?
- To make the data cleansing process more challenging
- To increase the volume of the dataset unnecessarily
- To satisfy a stakeholder's request for more data
- To gain a more comprehensive and accurate view of the business problem (Correct answer)
Correct answer: To gain a more comprehensive and accurate view of the business problem
Combining internal data (like sales records) with external data (like market trends) provides a richer, more complete context for analysis. Internal data shows what is happening within the company, while external data provides insight into the broader industry and economic environment, leading to more robust and reliable conclusions.
Question 4: During the data analysis phase of a project, a data analyst identifies a series of transactions with values that are 100 times larger than any other transaction in the dataset. These data points are best classified as:
- Noise
- Outliers (Correct answer)
- Features
- Dependencies
Correct answer: Outliers
Outliers are data points that differ significantly from other observations. In this case, transactions that are 100 times larger are extreme deviations from the norm. Identifying and handling outliers is a critical step in data preparation and analysis to ensure they don't skew the results.
Question 5: A data analyst is preparing a dataset for analysis. The 'customer address' column is a single field containing the street, city, state, and zip code. To make the data more useful for geographic analysis, the analyst splits this single column into four separate columns. This activity is a key part of which task?
- Formulating Research Questions
- Collecting Data
- Preparing Data (Correct answer)
- Interpreting Results
Correct answer: Preparing Data
Data preparation (also known as data preprocessing or data cleaning) involves transforming raw data into a clean and organized format suitable for analysis. Splitting a combined address field into separate components is a classic example of data preparation, as it structures the data for more effective analysis.
Question 6: Which of the following data sources is an example of primary, internal data?
- A publicly available government census report
- A market research study purchased from a third-party firm
- Customer feedback collected directly via a company-run survey (Correct answer)
- Sales data acquired from a partner organization's database
Correct answer: Customer feedback collected directly via a company-run survey
Primary data is collected firsthand for a specific purpose. Internal data originates from within the organization. A survey conducted by the company itself to gather customer feedback fits both definitions perfectly. The other options are examples of external and/or secondary data.
Free CBDA Sourcing and Analyzing Data Questions and Answers
A business data analyst is working for a financial institution to analyze potential credit card fraud.
The analyst has access to a large dataset of historical transactions.
Which analytical approach would be MOST effective for identifying transactions that are likely to be fraudulent?