Key Knowledge:

• Techniques covered include census, Geographic Information System (GIS) data, sensor, social media and weather
• Secondary data is data that you collect from sources that have already collected the data (QATS 2020 practice exam)

Example Responses:

• download from an existing repository - useful because the data has already been collected and organised
• look at websites - a quick way to get the data you need
• use the internet - an easy way to find the data you need.

Key Knowledge:

• Primary data is data that you collect firsthand (QATS 2020 practice exam)
• Techniques include interviews, observations, surveys
• Not in the list in the study design but also mentioned (in the textbook) is collecting your own data using sensors.

Key Knowledge:

• A good research question must be clear, focused, concise, complex and arguable
• Questions should not be able to be answered with a yes or no.
• Questions should start with What, Why or How and relate to the scenario.(from 2021 C1 Assessor comments)

Example Response:

• Why has there been a decrease in sales over the last 10 years at the company?

Key Knowledge:

• Social media is good for qualitative community attitudes, data is usually already available, might not have data from all audiences/age groups. (Summarised from DLTV Practice Exam 2021 QC3a)
• Geographic Information Systems (GIS) - data associated with geographic locations (includes elevation/altitude, latitude and longitude) can be presented on a map
• Census data provides a snapshot of the demographic composition and is important for government planning. (summarised from text book)
• Sensor data can be a good source of large amounts of accurate quantitative data eg: traffic. (summarised from text book)
• Weather data includes large amounts of quantitative data gathered by weather sensors and can provide data over short or long time periods (summarised from text book)

Key Knowledge:

• Quantitative data is is measurable and specific, and is therefore relatively easy to process and graph.
• Qualitative data is qualities or attributes, and is much harder to measure and process than quantitative data.

Key Knowledge:

Normalisation removes redundant data and arranges it into appropriate tables to improve data integrity and make the data easier to manage.

Key Knowledge:

Visualising data makes it much easier and quicker to get the message across, as opposed to presenting tables of raw data, which can be unclear and hard to understand. (From DLTV Practice Exam 2021 QC5a)

Example Response:

1. Read through the responses manually first to get a general idea of what is there.
2. Group the responses into themes- eg. group cricket, football, soccer, hockey into one sport category.
3. Tally up the totals for each and from there they can compare to how many families are requesting each type of activity. (From DLTV Practice Exam 2021 QC6)

Key Knowledge:

• Validation involves checking data for reasonableness and completeness. It is done when data is entered and includes existence, type and range checks.
• Verification is done later and can include proofreading and checking the data data entered matches the source data. (adapted from 2021 C11a)

Example Response:

Validation checks the data for reasonableness when it is entered into the system, such as people choosing their preferences from a drop-down list to only select acceptable options.
Verification checks data after it has been entered, such as proofreading or double checking that valid existing activities have been entered.

(from DLTV Practice Exam 2021 QC7)

Example Responses:

• develop profile of customers based on suburb/state/gender and improve target marketing strategy
• obtain an understanding of customer purchase trends
• tailor products/offers to specific customers
• basis of a mailing list for marketing campaigns
• use of contact details for marketing campaigns

(2021 C2)

Exampe Response:

An infographic is better in this case because the manager is looking for a static poster that contains text, statistics, images and charts. An infographic can do this, therefore a dynamic data visualisation that is interactive and changes in real time is not necessary.

(2021 B2a)

Key Knowledge:

• Data cleansing involves fixing or removing incorrect, corrupted, incorrectly formatted, duplicate, or incomplete data within a dataset.
• Make sure values in the same field use the same units
• Fields should contain values only (not units) you can specify the units in the field name
• Values such as dates should use the same format

Key Knowledge:

• Integrity is accuracy, authenticity, correctness, reasonableness, relevance or timeliness.
• The criteria must be a question or statement (not a single word) and must have related to the case study.

Example Responses:

Criteria: Is the collected data accurate?
Explanation: It is important that the collected data is accurate as otherwise any results produced for the data will be misrepresented and will not reflect the truth

Criteria: Is all of the data authentic?
Explanation: The data needs to come from reputable and reliable sources, otherwise the decisions made based off the data may be incorrect and could damage the integrity of the data.

(2021C5)

Key Knowledge:

• Formats include images, graphs, tables and text.
• Conventions include large/bold title/heading, readable text/fonts such as Times New Roman, a legend when using charts, appropriate colour and contrast.

Example Response:

Format: Charts and graphs can be used as they make it more engaging and readable as easy to understand.
Convention: For conventions, big bold headings and readable text styles can be used.

(From 2021 B2b)

Example Responses:

• The first design idea is not necessarily the best one
• A different design may be better suited in meeting the client's demands
• Designs can be a personal choice; providing a range allows the client to choose what would suit them the best.

(2021 B4a)

Example Responses

• The user can click on the arrows which bring them to another page
• The user can use links to navigate to another graph in the visualisation

Example Response:

Databases are better for storing large amounts of data. If properly created, they removed all redundancies (ie changing a name would only be done once and any linked data will be correct).

Databases can be used to to quickly search any field to find the resident they are looking for in a more user friendly environment.

(From DLTV Practice Exam 2021 QC4b)

Key Knowledge:

Testing is recorded in a test table, so the technique describes using the table.

Be sure to mention specific steps including producing test data, determining expected results and then checking actual results against the expected ones.

Example Response:

(Students were required to outline one suitable testing technique for navigating through a dynamic data visualisation.)

Produce test data for navigating the visualisation and determine the expected result for these test data.

For example: test the right arrow. The test data could be left click, right click and not clicking on it. The expected result would be move to the next page, nothing and nothing respectively.

(2021 C12)

Key Knowledge:

Students responses must relate the software function from the Data Analytics Software tools and functions document (published each year on the study page).

Functions include:

• perform calculations
• description - calculation will need to be performed to determine the top five products (by %)
• formatting the dynamic data visualisation charts/graphs
• creating hyperlinks and other navigations
• sorting the data
• filtering the data
• creating queries in the database to allow data to be graphed
• deleting unwanted data
• use of images
• conditional formatting.

Example Responses:

• Charting/Graphing: Use graphing functions to produce charts to use in the infographic/dynamic data visualisation
• Calculations: Calculating the percentage of respondents with a favourable response so the proportion of answers can be visualised.
• Sorting: the top 5 requested items can be sorted form the data based on a descending order.

(C10b 2021)

Key Knowledge:

• Consider the functional and non-functional requirements of the solution.
• Look at design principles to formulate criterion links to one of the principles.
• Use the measures of efficiency/effectiveness to formulate a question or statement.
  

Example Responses:

Design evaluation criteria can be developed based on the functional and non functional criteria, such as using the design principles for non functional aspect. These help determine a preferred design by giving a somewhat objective method of selecting a design, reducing indecision or subjective evaluation.

(2021 B4b)

Key Knowledge:

An evaluation strategy must indicate when the evaluation should occur (eg 3-6 months after implementation) and how they would go about the evaluation (interview, survey or direct observations).

Example Responses:

3-6 months after the implementation of the visualisation, they should conduct interviews with the users of the visualisation. This data could be used to determine to what extent the data visualisation meets both the functional and non-functional requirements.

(2021 C13)

Key Knowledge:

A recommended backup strategy could include:

• Frequency (daily, weekly)
• Media (tape, SSD, cloud)
• Location (cloud, offsite)
• Type (full, any type of partial - incremental, differential)

Example Responses:

The organisation should complete a full back up once a week, with incremental back ups daily. These back ups should be stored on an SSD (solid state Drive) and should be locked securely in the store's office. In addition, a copy of the backup should be located off-site. The store could use a wifi connection to store a copy of the back up in a cloud service in addition to the SSD onsite.

(2021 C16)

Example Responses:

Advantages

• Cost - purchasing physical storage can be expensive. Without the need for hardware, cloud storage is exceptionally cheaper per GB than using external drives.
• Accessibility - using the cloud for storage gives you access to your files from anywhere that has an internet connection.
• Recovery - in the event of a hard drive failure or other hardware malfunction, you can access your files on the cloud. It acts as a backup solution for your local storage on physical drives.
• Syncing and updating - when you are working with cloud storage, every time you make changes to a file it will be synced and updated across all of your devices.
• Size - can easily obtain large amounts of storage space online.
  24/7 access using any device.

Disadvantages

• Internet connection - cloud-based storage is dependent on having an internet connection. If you are on a slow network, you may have issues accessing your storage. In the event you find yourself somewhere without internet, you won't be able to access your files.
• Cost - there are additional costs for uploading and downloading files from the cloud. These can quickly add up if you are trying to access lots of files often.
• Support for cloud storage isn't the best, especially if you are using a free version of a cloud provider. Many providers refer you to a knowledge base or FAQs.
• Privacy/Security - when you use a cloud provider, your data is no longer on your physical storage. Who is responsible for making sure that data is secure? That's a grey area that is still being figured out.
• Less control over your data, including backup.
• Security - greater chance of a security breach.
• Deletion of data - do you know if your data has been deleted or not?

(2021 B5b)

Key Knowledge:

* The Privacy Act 1988 applies to Federal government agencies and contractors and private businesses with an annual turnover over $3 million
* The Health Records Act 2001 Applies to organisations in Victoria dealing with health related information
* The Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014 applies to Victorian government agencies and contractors.

Key Knowledge:

• Types of threats include accidental, deliberate and events-based
• A strategy involves a series of steps.
  

Example Response:

For an event based threat: To protect the organization from this threat, the organisation could apply a data backup strategy across all its stores, who should be assigned to take weekly full backups and daily incremental backups, and stores this off-site on the cloud, this way a power surge will not lead to permanent customer transaction data loss since a copy of data is located off-site to be retrieved.

(2021 C14)

Key Knowledge:

A set of procedures is a number of steps or separate ideas that relate to a particular item. 

Security procedures can include

• encrypt the data
• set up access control procedures such as usernames and passwords to access files
• set up access restrictions - only certain XPRESSPLUS staff can access files
• set up policies around the use and access to the data
• de-identify data in files
• reduce the number of copies of the data (this is the most important - spreadsheets are generally why corporate data leaks)
• set up security education training and awareness around this application
• ensure that appropriate physical security controls to where the data is used and stored are implemented
• ensure that appropriate software security controls around the data are implemented (firewalls etc.)

Example Response:

Implement software security measures such as username and password to minimise unauthorised access. Then implement physical security controls such as locking the door of the room the database files in. Also implement a backup strategy at the daily incremental and weekly full back ups to ensure that he can recover the data in the event of data breach or loss.

(2021 C9)