Skip to content

ACCA Strategic Professional · Advanced Performance Management · Data science and analytics

Harbor Retail plc's finance team produces a monthly dashboard showing last quarter's sales by store, region and product category, including percentage changes against the prior year. No attempt is made to explain causes or forecast future sales. Which type of analytics does this dashboard represent?

This is descriptive analytics, because the dashboard only summarises historical sales by store, region and product and shows changes against the prior year. It does not explain why results occurred, forecast future sales or recommend decisions, which would be diagnostic, predictive or prescriptive analytics respectively.

  1. ADescriptive analyticsCorrect
  2. BDiagnostic analytics
  3. CPredictive analytics
  4. DPrescriptive analytics

Explanation

The dashboard summarises what has already happened using historical data, with no explanation of causes, forecasts or recommended actions. That is descriptive analytics. Diagnostic would explain why sales changed, predictive would forecast, and prescriptive would recommend actions.

Did you get it right without looking?

One question tells you little. A timed set on Data science and analytics shows your real accuracy, how long you take and where you lose marks.

Practise Data science and analyticsFree diagnostic mock

More Data science and analytics questions