Questions and Answers of Business Intelligence and Analytics

Investigate via a Web search how models and their solutions are used by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in the “war against terrorism.” Also investigate how other governments or
Consider a problem with the following goal, main criteria, and subcriteria. Assume relative importance that is most appropriate to your personal experience when ranking the main criteria and
Have a group meeting and discuss how you chose a place to live when you relocated to start your college program (or relocated to where you are now). What factors were important for each individual
Consider a problem with the following goal, main criteria, and subcriteria. Assume relative importance that is most appropriate to your personal experience when ranking the main criteria and
Explain how LP can solve allocation problems.
This exercise was also contributed by Dr. Rick Wilson of Oklahoma State University. The following simple scenario mimics the “Black Book” described in a Business Week article accessed February
This problem was contributed by Dr. Rick Wilson of Oklahoma State University. The recent drought has hit farmers hard. Cows are eating candy corn! You are interested in creating a feed plan for the
The Junta Nacional de Auxilio Escolar y Becas (JUNAEB), an agency of the Chilean government, promotes integration and retention of socially vulnerable children in the country’s school system.
What is a search approach?
What is the key difference between system dynamics simulation and other simulation types?
Each group in the class should access a different online Java-based Web simulation system (especially those systems from visual interactive simulation vendors) and run it. Write up your experience
List the different problem-solving search methods.
Knowledge about the spread of a disease plays an important role in both preparing for and responding to a pandemic outbreak. Previous models for such analyses are mostly homogenous and make use of
What are the practical limits to blind searching?
Search online to find vendors of genetic algorithms and investigate the business applications of their products. What kinds of applications are most prevalent?
Go to palisade.com and examine the capabilities of Evolver. Write a summary about your findings.
Describe in detail three genetic algorithm applications.
Each group should review, examine, and demonstrate in class a different state-of-the-art DSS software product. The specific packages depend on your instructor and the group interests. You may need to
Describe the capability of Evolver as an optimization tool. We now turn our attention to simulation, a class of modeling method that has enjoyed significant actual use in decision making.
Explain why VIS is particularly helpful in implementing recommendations derived by computers.
Stock markets can be unpredictable. Factors that may cause changes in stock prices are only imperfectly known, and understanding them has not been entirely successful. Would ANN be a viable solution?
A building society uses neural network to predict the creditworthiness of mortgage applicants. There are two output nodes: one for yes (1 = yes, 0 = no) and one for no (1 = no, 0 = yes). If an
What are the common applications of kNN?
Image recognition is an emerging data mining application field involved in processing, analyzing, and categorizing visual objects such as pictures. In the process of recognition (or categorization),
The purpose of this exercise is to develop models to predict forest cover type using a number of cartographic measures. The given data set (Online File W6.1) includes four wilderness areas found in
Egg plc, now a part of Yorkshire Building Society (egg.com) is the world’s largest online bank. It provides banking, insurance, investments, and mortgages to more than 3.6 million customers through
Staff at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a U.S. federal agency that coordinates disaster response when the President declares a national disaster, always got two floods at once.
Blastrac, a self-proclaimed global leader in portable surface preparation technologies and equipment (e.g., shot blasting, grinding, polishing, scarifying, scraping, milling, and cutting equipment),
When Karen Maloney, business development manager of the Cancer Vaccine Center (CVC) at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, decided to investigate the competitive landscape of the cancer vaccine
In the mining industry, most of the underground injuries and fatalities are due to rock falls (i.e., fall of hanging wall/roof). The method that has been used for many years in the mines when
What is an ANN?
What is the so-called “black-box” syndrome?
What is special about the kNN algorithm?
Discuss the evolution of ANN. How have biological networks contributed to the development of artificial networks? How are the two networks similar?
Explore Web sites of neural network vendors—Alyuda Research (alyuda.com), Applied Analytic Systems (aasdt. com), BioComp Systems, Inc. (biocompsystems.com), NeuralWare (neuralware.com), and Ward
The electrical power industry produces and delivers electric energy (electricity or power) to both residential and business customers, wherever and whenever they need it. Electricity can be generated
How do you determine the optimal kernel type and kernel parameters?
What are the major concepts related to network information processing in ANN? Explain the summation and transformation functions and their combined effects on ANN performance.
Go to the Teradata University Network Web site (teradatauniversitynetwork.com) or the URL given byyour instructor. Locate the Harrah’s case. Read the case and answer the following questions:a.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, over 6 million traffic accidents claim more than 41,000 lives each year in the United States. Causes of accidents and related injury
How do weights function in an ANN?
What are the critical success factors for a kNN implementation?
Discuss the common ANN architectures. What are the main differences between Kohonen’s self-organizing feature maps and Hopfield networks?
The bankruptcy-prediction problem can be viewed as a problem of classification. The data set you will be using for this problem includes five ratios that have been computed from the financial
Generally, student attrition at a university is defined by the number of students who do not complete a degree in that institution. It has become one of the most challenging problems for decision
Search the Internet to find other ANN explanation methods.
Explain the steps in neural network–based systems development? What procedures are involved in back propagation learning algorithms and how do they work?
List and critically examine at least three potential sources of data that could be used within a data warehouse.
Read the full Continental Airlines case (summarized in the End-of-Chapter Application Case) at teradatauniversitynetwork.com and answer the questions.Continental Airlines caseAs business intelligence
Download an information visualization tool, such as Tableau, QlikView, or Spotfire. If your school does not have an educational agreement with these companies, then a trial version would be
Headquartered in the UK, Mace is an international consultancy and construction company that offers highly integrated services across the full property and infrastructure lifecycle. It employs 3,700
Infinity Property & Casualty Corporation, a provider of nonstandard personal automobile insurance with an emphasis on higher-risk drivers, depends on its ability to identify fraudulent claims for
What are the major data mining processes?
Visit teradatauniversitynetwork.com. Identify case studies and white papers about data mining. Describe recent developments in the field.
When Larry Godwin took over as director of the Memphis Police Department (MPD) in 2004, crime across the metro area was surging, and city leaders were growing impatient. “The mayor told me I want
In the final step of data processing, how would data reduction facilitate decision analysis? Give an example.
Go to teradatauniversitynetwork.com or a URL provided by your instructor. Locate Web seminars related to data mining. In particular, locate a seminar given by C. Imhoff and T. Zouqes. Watch the Web
The terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, underlined the importance of open source intelligence. The USA PATRIOT Act and the creation of the U.S. Department of Homeland
How would data mining algorithms deal with qualitative data like unstructured texts from interviews?
For this exercise, your goal is to build a model to identify inputs or predictors that differentiate risky customers from others (based on patterns pertaining to previous customers) and then use
What are the most popular free data mining tools?
According to the American Cancer Society, half of all men and one-third of all women in the United States will develop cancer during their lifetimes; approximately 1.5 million new cancer cases will
What do you think are the reasons for these myths about data mining?
For this exercise, you will replicate (on a smaller scale) the box-office prediction modeling explained in Application Case 5.6. Download the training data set from Online File W5.2, MovieTrain.xlsx,
Distinguish data mining from other analytical tools and techniques.
2degrees is New Zealand’s fastest growing mobile telecommunications company - In less than 3 years, they have transformed the landscape of New Zealand’s mobile telecommunications market. Entering
In the CRISP-DM process, what does ‘data reduction’ mean?
This exercise is aimed at introducing you to association rule mining. The Excel data set baskets1ntrans.xlsx has around 2800 observations/records of supermarket transaction data. Each record contains
In early 2012, an infamous story appeared concerning Target’s practice of predictive analytics. The story was about a teenager girl who was being sent advertising flyers and coupons by Target for
Predicting box-office receipts (i.e., financial success) of a particular motion picture is an interesting and challenging problem. According to some domain experts, the movie industry is the “land
Give examples of situations in which cluster analysis would be an appropriate data mining technique.
What is the major difference between cluster analysis and classification?
Explain how the validity of available data affects model development and assessment.
What are some of the methods for cluster analysis?
In what step of data processing should missing data be distinguished? How will it affect data clearing and transformation?
Give examples of situations in which association would be an appropriate data mining technique.
Distinguish between an inconsistent value and missing value. When can inconsistent values be removed from the data set and missing data be ignored?
Discuss the common ways to deal with the missing data? How is missing data dealt with in a survey where some respondents have not replied to a few questions?
In the company identified in the previous question, illustrate their main products and style of BI and discuss the main tools used.Data from previous QuestionSearch the Web for a company that uses
At teradatauniversitynetwork.com, read and answer the questions with the assignment “Ad-Vent Technology: Using the MicroStrategy Sales Analytic Model.” The MicroStrategy software is accessible
At teradatauniversitynetwork.com, watch the Web seminars titled “Real-Time Data Warehousing: The Next Generation of Decision Support Data Management” and “Building the Real-Time Enterprise.”
At teradatauniversitynetwork.com, watch the Web seminars “Data Integration Renaissance: New Drivers and Emerging Approaches,” “In Search of a Single Version of the Truth: Strategies for
Consider the future of data warehousing. Perform a Web search on this topic. Also, read these two articles: L. Agosta, “Data Warehousing in a Flat World: Trends for 2006,” DM Direct Newsletter,
Access teradatauniversitynetwork.com. Identify the latest articles, research reports, and cases on data warehousing. Describe recent developments in the field. Include in your report how data
Delta Lloyd Group is a financial services provider based in the Netherlands. It offers insurance, pensions, investing, and banking services to its private and corporate clients through its three
Search the Web for a company that uses the four major components of a standard BI system.
Mobile service providers (i.e., Telecommunication Companies, or TELCOs in short) that helped trigger the explosive growth of the industry in the mid- to late-1990s have long reaped the benefits of
Describe data integration.
Identify and describe the core characteristics of a DW.
Consider the case describing the development and application of a data warehouse for Coca-Cola Japan (a summary appears in Application Case 3.4), available at the DSS Resources Web site,
In the spring of 2012, leadership at MultiCare Health System (MultiCare)—a Tacoma, Washington–based health system—realized the results of a 12-month journey to reduce septicemia. The effort was
How has the Web influenced data warehouse design?
Read the Ball (2005) article and rank-order the criteria (ideally for a real organization). In a report, explain how important each criterion is and why.
BP Lubricants established the BIGS program following recent merger activity to deliver globally consistent and transparent management information. As well as timely business intelligence, BIGS
What are the differences between dependent and independent data marts?
Explain when you should implement a two- or three tiered architecture when considering developing a data warehouse.
What are the structural differences between two-tier and three-tier architectures? Which one of the two models is more suitable for analytical operations performed on a very large data set?
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc., is one of the leading hotel and leisure companies in the world with 1,112 properties in nearly 100 countries and 154,000 employees at its owned and
What is the role of ODS? How does it differ from an EDW?
At teradatauniversitynetwork.com, read and answer the questions to the case “Harrah’s High Payoff from Customer Information.” Relate Harrah’s results to how airlines and other casinos use

Showing 200 - 300 of 369