University of Dayton

MIS 366/MBA 667A ASSIGNMENT 5

See syllabus for due date.

This assignment weight is noted in the syllabus.

General Instructions – Microsoft BI Tools

Please submit a Word document with your answers for this assignment, and the Excel spreadsheet on which you did your work. Along with your answers (in the document), please submit screen captures of the relevant outputs.

Assignment 5 will let you try out Microsoft BI Tools, which is a fairly complete suite of the sorts of tools that can be used to do various BI-relevant tasks such as Shopping Cart Analysis, Exception Identification, Goal Seeking Analysis, What-If Analysis, Forecasting, Analyzing Key Influencers of various variables, and so forth.

The package makes use of some Data Mining Add-Ins and SQL Server. Both of these can be gotten from Microsoft. The SQL Server Package (no, you don’t need to do SQL yet for the course) is basically used to run the analyses against your data, but all the action you’ll be getting is in the Excel DM Tools.

One thing. I found that when I downloaded the data set that goes with the DM tools, it didn’t have all the tabs. I found another version that did. The advice is to make sure you have all of the tabs. I’ve included a screen shot of what the first sheet in the right file has below:

Note that it has tabs with labels such as, among other things: Table Analysis Tool Sample, Forecasting, Associate and Shopping Basket, and Call Center. Make sure they’re all there so you can do any of the analyses you might want to do.

For Assignment #5, you are to do the following:

1)  Following the instructions on the first few pages of the Data Mining Lab (we’ll review all of it), download and install the free Data Mining Add-In tools for Excel from Microsoft.

2)  Also, download and install an evaluation copy of Microsoft SQL Server 2012 or later; you will have to register, but by so doing you get free, a 6-month license for SQL Server.

3)  Install both SQL Server and the Data Mining Add-In tools on your machine. Additionally, you will want to create a connection between your spreadsheet and database. Follow the instructions carefully.

4)  In class, we will cover the vast majority of the following types of analyses (they’re also outlined in the Data Mining Lab handout):

  1. Analyze Key Influencers
  2. Detect Categories
  3. Fill from Example
  4. Forecast
  5. Highlight Exceptions
  6. Prediction Calculator
  7. Scenario Analyses – Goal Seek and What If?
  8. Shopping Basket Analyses

5)  For this assignment, you are to follow the instructions in the Data Mining Handout and answer all relevant questions for the following:

  1. Analyze Key Influencers
  2. Forecast
  3. Prediction Calculator
  4. Shopping Basket Analyses

6)  In addition, you should do any two additional analyses (those that interest you for whatever reason). One of these should be a Scenario Analysis (either Goal Seek or What If?), and the other should be one of the other tools.

7)  For each analysis, you should complete it, include screen shots of key screen outputs, answer any questions in that section about the analysis you have done, and provide a brief description of what the analysis you just did is for. Put all of this in a Word document.

8)  Send me your Excel file (give it your last name) and your Word document (give that your last name as well).

9)  Send all those files as email attachments to by the date/time in the syllabus.

This assignment is meant to be pretty straightforward. However, in the unlikely case that something is unclear in these instructions please advise me via email and I’ll clarify for you. Also, the assignment is due on the date noted in the syllabus.