Business Intelligence and Analytics Flashcards

What distinguishes descriptive analytics from predictive analytics?

Answer: Descriptive analytics explains what happened; predictive analytics forecasts what will happen

Descriptive analytics summarizes historical data to explain past events, while predictive analytics uses statistical models to forecast future outcomes.

A star schema in data warehousing consists of:

Answer: A central fact table surrounded by dimension tables

A star schema has a central fact table containing measurable business metrics surrounded by denormalized dimension tables providing context.

What is the purpose of a data mart?

Answer: A subset of a data warehouse focused on a specific business function

A data mart is a subset of the enterprise data warehouse containing data relevant to a specific department or business function like sales or finance.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in BI are best described as:

Answer: Quantifiable metrics that reflect how effectively an organization achieves objectives

KPIs are quantifiable measurements that evaluate the effectiveness of an organization in meeting its key business objectives.

What is prescriptive analytics?

Answer: Analytics that recommends actions to achieve desired outcomes

Prescriptive analytics goes beyond describing or predicting to recommend specific actions that will achieve desired outcomes, often using optimization algorithms.

In BI, what is a 'data cube'?

Answer: A multi-dimensional representation of data for OLAP analysis

A data cube is a multi-dimensional data structure used in OLAP that organizes data along multiple dimensions for fast analytical queries.