DA0-002 Data Governance Practice Question
A data analyst creates a dashboard for executives that shows a key metric trending downward. The analyst notices that the metric is highly volatile day-to-day. Which visualization type is most appropriate to show the underlying trend?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse 'showing the data' with 'showing the trend' — candidates pick the daily bar chart because it is the most detailed, but the question explicitly asks for the underlying trend, which requires smoothing.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
7-day moving average line chart.
A 7-day moving average line chart smooths out day-to-day volatility by averaging each point with the preceding six days, revealing the underlying directional trend that executives need to see. Because the metric is highly volatile, plotting raw daily values would obscure the trend in noise; the moving average makes the downward trajectory visually obvious while preserving the time-series nature of the data.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
7-day moving average line chart.
Why this is correct
A 7-day moving average smooths daily volatility by averaging each point with the preceding six days, revealing the underlying directional trend. Executives see the genuine trajectory rather than noise, directly addressing the highly volatile day-to-day readings in the stem.
- ✗
Pie chart showing proportion of days.
Why it's wrong here
A pie chart shows parts of a whole at one point in time, so it cannot display a metric's downward movement across days. It is tempting because proportions of days sound temporal, but pie charts suit categorical composition, not time-series trend.
- ✗
Scatter plot with regression line.
Why it's wrong here
A scatter plot with regression line plots two continuous variables against each other, so it cannot show a metric's movement across time. It is tempting because regression lines do summarise relationships between paired numeric variables, which would suit correlation analysis rather than a daily trend.
- ✗
Daily bar chart.
Why it's wrong here
Daily bars plot each volatile value separately, so the underlying downward trend stays obscured by day-to-day noise. It is tempting because bars do encode time along the x-axis, but they suit comparing discrete period totals rather than revealing a smoothed trend.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official CompTIA exam blueprint
This DA0-002 practice question is part of Courseiva's free CompTIA certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the DA0-002 exam.