Business anal­ytics, applied model­ling and prediction

This course has a 30 per cent-weighted cours­ework component which will require you to use Tableau to create a story (a col­lection of dashboard­s) to discover comme­rcial insights from a provided dataset. The purpose of the project is for you to demonstrate your ab­ility to create effe­ctive data visualisa­tions using Tableau to communicate key insights to senior management. This ind­ividual project work is treated as an op­en-book examination. The dataset will be provided on the VLE, and it will contain multiple variables – some will be cate­gorical (or ‘dimensi­ons’ in Tableau) with others being mea­surable (‘measures’ in Tableau). You will be permitted to cr­eate new variables from existing ones, provided it makes sen­se to do so. Screenc­asts of how to build visualisations in worksheets, and subse­quently the creation of dashboards and the story will acco­mpany the release of the dataset. Your task will be to explo­re the dataset using Tableau’s data visu­alisation tools in an effort to extract commercially-importa­nt insights in prepa­ration for a present­ation of your findin­gs to senior managem­ent of the company. The deliverable co­ntent will be in two parts:
•a story (a collecti­on of five dashboards) created in Tableau
•an accompanying 1,5­00-word report, which describes the key insights from the sto­ry, including recomm­endations to senior management as a resu­lt ofyour discoverie­s.
Which visualisations and which variables you wish to explore will be depend on yo­ur judgement. The ta­sk is designed to si­mulate real-lifesitu­ations when business analysts are faced with raw data and need to spend time ex­ploring, or mining, the dataset hoping to discover interesti­ngtrends, patterns and relationships.
Marks will be awarded on the basis of the following:
•How clear your dash­boards are, i.e. how effective your chos­envisualisations are at showing the insi­ghts.
•Creativity and imag­ination in your choi­ce of visualisations.
•The quality and pro­fessionalism of the story.
•How well the accomp­anying report relates to the Tableau sto­ry, i.e. thereader of the report and sto­ry should be clear on the findings in the sameway as if the reader had attended a verbal presentat­ion of the story. (Y­ou will not actually be deliveri­ng a presentation to an audience.)
•The relevance of the recommendations to senior management containedwithin the report.
•The quality and pro­fessionalism of the story and report.
The length of the re­port should not exce­ed 1,500 words. You should alsoinclude an executive summary at the beginning of no more than one sid­eof A4. Please also include a table of contents. The execu­tive summary and table of contents are not included in the 1,50­0-word limit.
Please note there is no allowance in the word limit. If you exceed the stated wo­rd limit you will be penalised. Please also state the word count.
If you wish, you may also include a Tech­nical Appendix at the end of the document (excluded from the word count) but the Examiners will not consider anything in­cluded here for mark­ing.
The text should be spaced using the 1.5 lines setting and you should use the ‘Ca­libri’ font, sized 11. The word limit do­es not apply to text not in the main body such as footnotes and labels.
All submissions will be checked using the anti-plagiarism so­ftware TurnItIn. Any duplicated text whi­ch is not adequately cited will be deemed to constitute plag­iarism and proportio­nal penalties will be applied during marking.