DA0-002 Practice Test 49 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company's sales report shows revenue of $1.2M, but the calculation method is unclear. What data governance artifact would clarify the definition?

Accepted Answer

Data dictionary. A data dictionary provides clear definitions, calculations, and sources for metrics.

Answer

Audit trail

Answer

Row-level security

Answer

Data lineage

Question 2

A data analyst notices that two departments report different revenue totals for the same period. Which data governance issue is most likely?

Accepted Answer

Single version of truth. Lack of a single version of truth means data sources are not reconciled, leading to discrepancies.

Answer

Data dictionary

Answer

Data lineage

Answer

Row-level security

Question 3

A data analyst is documenting a report for external stakeholders. Which THREE elements should be included to ensure report quality and transparency?

Accepted Answer

Data freshness (e.g., last updated timestamp). Data freshness, methodology notes, and limitations/assumptions help users assess the reliability and context of the report.

Answer

Employee names who created the report

Answer

Row-level security settings

Question 4

A data analyst is creating a report that includes customer names and addresses. To comply with privacy regulations, which TWO actions should the analyst take?

Accepted Answer

Use aggregated data instead of individual records.. Anonymizing PII (e.g., removing or masking names/addresses) and aggregating data prevent individual identification, which is required for GDPR compliance.

Answer

Include customer names for context.

Answer

Share the raw data with all stakeholders.

Answer

Encrypt the report but keep names visible.

Question 5

A data analyst is building a report that includes customer names and addresses. To comply with GDPR, what must the analyst do before publishing the report?

Accepted Answer

Anonymize the PII data. GDPR requires that personally identifiable information (PII) be anonymized to prevent individual identification in reports.

Answer

Add a data dictionary

Answer

Increase data freshness

Answer

Apply row-level security

Question 6

A sales VP wants a quick summary of last month's revenue change and key drivers. Which report section is most relevant?

Accepted Answer

Executive summary. Executive summaries provide high-level numbers and context for quick decision-making.

Answer

Data dictionary

Answer

Methodology notes

Answer

Row-level data

Question 7

An analyst is presenting a recommendation to increase marketing spend. Which statement best follows the data-driven recommendation structure (evidence → insight → recommendation → expected impact)?

Accepted Answer

Based on a 5% lift in sales from previous campaigns, we recommend a 10% increase in marketing spend, expecting a 7% revenue growth.. The correct structure provides evidence, insight derived from it, a recommendation, and the expected impact.

Answer

A 10% increase in marketing spend is recommended because we have budget.

Answer

The data shows sales are up, so we should spend more on marketing.

Answer

We should increase marketing spend by 10% because it might boost sales.

Question 8

A healthcare analytics team is building a classification model to predict patient readmission within 30 days. The dataset contains 10,000 records with 30 features, including demographics, vital signs, lab results, and medication history. The target variable is imbalanced: 85% no readmission, 15% readmission. The team used logistic regression with default settings and achieved an accuracy of 85%, but the model predicted 'no readmission' for all patients. The lead analyst suspects the model is not learning due to class imbalance. The team has time to implement one corrective action before the next model review. Which action should the team take?

Accepted Answer

Apply SMOTE to oversample the readmission class. SMOTE (Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique) directly addresses the class imbalance by generating synthetic samples for the minority class (readmission). This forces the logistic regression model to learn decision boundaries that separate the two classes, rather than defaulting to the majority class prediction. With 85% majority and 15% minority, accuracy alone is misleading, and SMOTE is a proven technique to improve recall for the minority class.

Answer

Remove features with low variance to reduce noise

Answer

Use accuracy as the evaluation metric to monitor improvement

Answer

Switch to a random forest model with default settings

Question 9

A financial analyst is preparing a report that must comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act. What is the most critical requirement for this report?

Accepted Answer

Audit trail. SOX requires audit trails to ensure the integrity and traceability of financial data for compliance.

Answer

Row-level security

Answer

Data anonymization

Answer

Data dictionary

Question 10

An analyst is creating an executive summary for a quarterly business review. Which THREE components are essential for an effective executive summary?

Accepted Answer

Actionable recommendations. An executive summary should start with a headline number, provide context, and include actionable recommendations.

Answer

Detailed data tables

Answer

SQL queries used to extract data

Question 11

An operations manager needs to monitor manufacturing line status every 15 minutes to identify bottlenecks. Which type of report should be used?

Accepted Answer

Operational report. Operational reports provide real-time or near-real-time data for monitoring ongoing operations.

Answer

Ad hoc report

Answer

Analytical report

Answer

Scheduled report

Question 12

A data analyst is designing a dashboard for a sales team. Which TWO of the following are best practices for dashboard design?

Accepted Answer

Use consistent color coding for similar metrics.. Consistent color coding for similar metrics reduces cognitive load and helps users quickly interpret data without re-learning visual cues. In dashboard design, this aligns with Gestalt principles of similarity and proximity, ensuring that revenue metrics, for example, always appear in the same color across charts. This practice is recommended by data visualization experts like Stephen Few and is a standard in tools like Tableau and Power BI.

Answer

Use complex visualizations to impress users.

Answer

Include as many KPIs as possible on one screen.

Answer

Use a single chart type for all visuals.

Question 13

A simple linear regression model predicts sales (y) from advertising spend (x). The equation is y = 2.5x + 10, and R² = 0.81. Which interpretation is correct?

Accepted Answer

81% of the variation in sales is explained by advertising spend.. Slope indicates that each unit increase in x increases y by 2.5 units. R² of 0.81 means 81% of variance in y is explained by x.

Answer

The correlation between sales and advertising is 0.81.

Answer

When advertising is $0, sales are $2.5.

Answer

For every $1 increase in advertising, sales increase by $10 on average.

Question 14

A data analyst is pulling data from a production database for a report. The database contains customer orders with a column 'order_date'. The analyst notices that some orders have dates in the future. Which data quality issue does this represent?

Accepted Answer

Violation of business rules. Future order dates violate a business rule that order_date must be in the past or present. This is a classic data integrity issue where the data does not conform to domain-specific constraints, such as 'order_date <= CURRENT_DATE'. The analyst should flag this as a violation of business rules, not a data type or consistency problem.

Answer

Invalid data type

Answer

Inconsistent data

Answer

Missing data

Question 15

A company is analyzing customer feedback sentiment. The dataset is highly imbalanced with 95% positive and 5% negative comments. Which technique should the analyst use to address class imbalance before modeling?

Accepted Answer

Use SMOTE. SMOTE (Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique) is the correct choice because it generates synthetic samples for the minority class (negative comments) by interpolating between existing minority instances, rather than simply duplicating them. This addresses the 95:5 imbalance without the information loss of undersampling or the overfitting risk of naive oversampling.

Answer

Use accuracy as the evaluation metric

Answer

Undersample the majority class

Answer

Oversample the majority class