a). You have been reading about Big Data, analytics, and visualization. Explain Big Data, its importance for managerial accountants, and how managerial accountants can benefit from and contribute to business analytics (including descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive analytics).

(b). What is your favorite data visualization tool? Do you agree or disagree with the following statements, why?

Sound data analytics is the key to using data for decision-making. This is where the story embedded in the data is unlocked. Data visualization is all fluff - just a bunch of pretty pictures.

Data visualization methodology is the key to communicating the story in the data to the people making the decisions. It makes the data come alive.