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CMA Intermediate · Financial Management and Business Data Analytics · Introduction to Data Science for Business Decision-making

A Pune-based retailer reviews last quarter's sales dashboard showing the average basket value, the number of bills per day and the best-selling product categories. Which type of analytics is being used?

The retailer is using descriptive analytics, because the dashboard only summarises past sales through averages, counts and rankings. It does not forecast future sales, which would be predictive, nor recommend what action to take, which would be prescriptive.

  1. ADescriptive analyticsCorrect
  2. BPredictive analytics
  3. CPrescriptive analytics
  4. DDiagnostic-only simulation analytics

Explanation

Summarising what has already happened using averages, counts and rankings is descriptive analytics. Predictive analytics would estimate future values, and prescriptive analytics would recommend an action. The dashboard does neither of those.

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