Analytic Report: Learning Outcomes
Purpose: The purpose of this Part is to provide students with practical experience in working in teams to write a data analytical report to provide useful insights, pattern and trends in the chosen/given dataset. This activity will give students the opportunity to show innovation and creativity in applying SAS Analytics, and designing useful visualization and predictive solutions for various analytics problems.
Project Details:
This is a group assignment and you will complete the Part with your team. Your team will be made up of at most 3 members who are all enrolled in the same laboratory - the teams will be allocated by your tutor. It is expected that each team member will contribute equally to the project.
Your team will use SAS Visual Analytics to explore, analyze and visualize the dataset provided. You will receive feedback on the draft about presentation choices, content, analysis, and style.
The aim is to use the data set allocated to provide interesting insights, trends and patterns amongst the data. Your intended audience is the CEO and middle management of a Retail Company.
In addition, each individual team member will write a short reflection as part of the report on their individual experience on working on the project.
Assessment Tasks
Part 1- Background information - Write a description of the dataset and project, and its importance for the organization. Discuss the main benefits of using visual analytics to explore big data. In this you should include a justification for using the visualizations that you will use and how they have been successful in other similar projects. This discussion should be suitable for a general audience. Information must come from at least 6 appropriate sources (2 per student) be appropriately referenced. [2 to 3 pages]
Part 2 - Reporting / Dashboards - For your project, perform the relevant data analysis Parts by answering the guided Problems provided (see Appendix for Problems and dataset) and, identify the visualization you need to develop.
Note: remove any missing data points from your visualizations where possible/suitable
Part 3 - Additional Visualizations - In addition to the guided Problems, it is expected that each student will provide at least two other visualizations of the data (i.e. for a group of 3 students this is 6 extra visualizations). These additional visualizations will be judged in terms of quality of the findings and complexity of analysis. These visualizations should be using multi-dimensional, filtering and advance calculation techniques.
Part 4 - Justification -Justify why these visualizations are chosen in Part 2 and 3. Note: To ensure that you discuss this Part properly, you must include visual samples of the reports you produce (i.e. the screenshots of the BI report/dashboard must be presented and explained in the written report; use 'Snipping tool'), and also include any assumptions that you may have made about the analysis in your Part 2 (i.e. the report to the operational team of the company).[1 to 2 pages]
Part 5 - Discussion of findings - using the visualizations created discuss the findings from the data set. In this discussion you should explain what each visualization shows. Then summarize the main findings. [3 to 4 pages]
Part 6 - Executive Summary - summary of the data analysis including a brief introduction, methods used and a list of the key findings [1 page only]
Part 7 - The Reflection (Individual Part) - each team member is expected to write a brief reflection about this project in terms of challenges, learning and contribution. [1 to 2 pages]
Guided Problems
GROUP TASK: Guided Problems to identify the visualizations you need to develop.
Problem 1. Create a data dictionary for the data source by the group.
Problem 2. How many Customers are in the database?
Problem 3. What are top 10 Customers with respect to all countries?
Problem 4. What are the top 10 Countries with respect to Total Revenue?
Problem 5. What are the top 10 Customers from Australia in terms of Total Revenue?
Problem 6. What are the top 5 days with respect to most numbers of orders placed by the customers?
Problem 7. What are the top 3 and bottom 3 customers in terms of quantity ordered?
Problem 8. Which customer type is most and least popular in terms of quantity ordered?
Problem 9. What are the top 5 countries with respect to each customer type?
Problem 10. What is the quantity ordered by customer type and continent name?
Problem 11. What are the number of customers with the same title?
Problem 12. What is the min and max days to deliver in each city?
Problem 13. What are the most appropriate predictors of quantity ordered? Hint- use decision tree
Problem 14. Create a geomap of the customer countries?
Problem 15. Create a cluster analysis on customer type related data.
Problem 16. What are the days to delivery for each customer type in each continent?
Problem 17. For above Problem, what are the top 3 customer type in terms of days to delivery?
Problem 18. Draw a bubble plot to show the number of orders with respect to days to delivery.
Problem 19. What is the correlation between quantity ordered, unit cost and discount in percent?
Problem 20. What is the quantity ordered with respect to customer type and unit cost?
Big Data and Analytics Group Presentation
Purpose: The purpose of the oral presentation is to provide an opportunity for students to present the results of data analysis and to share this knowledge while practicing their verbal communication skills
Assessment Details:
All members of the team are to work together to present their findings and recommendations developed whilst completing the analysis of the data. The presentation should include a visual component, such as Power Point, to support the delivery of their findings.
Requirements:
A) Presentations are to be between 10 to12 minutes in length
B) Each team member must present for at least three minutes to verbally present some of the findings from the report
C) Teams must provide one visual component (e.g. Power Point) that is consistent in presentation, fonts and format
D) Any references used in your presentation must be included at the end of the presentation in APA format (see below).
E) The presentation must include:
- An introduction of the topic and team members
- The findings made from the analysis of the data including images to support these findings
- The recommendations you will make in your report
- A conclusion