CAP - Sample Test

The following sample test questions for each domain were developed by subject matter experts in the analytics field. The correct answer key at the end of this list of questions provides the correct answers to each question. These sample questions will never appear in an actual CAP^® examination.

The 23 questions published here are intended to familiarize certification candidates and potential certification candidates with the format of the questions that appear on the CAP examination. They are also intended to provide a sample of the content (knowledge and skill) assessed by the CAP examination. These questions are not intended as a self-assessment instrument nor should they be used to predict success or failure on the CAP exam. Candidates and potential candidates should bear in mind that the CAP examination is a "pass/fail" assessment and that passing does not require correct answers to all questions. It should also be kept in mind that examination preparation efforts will likely increase knowledge and sharpen skills.

Which of the following best describes the data and information flow within an organization?
Information assuranceInformation strategyInformation mappingInformation architecture
A multiple linear regression was built to try to predict customer expenditures based on 200 independent variables (behavioral and demographic). 10,000 rows of data were fed into a stepwise regression, each row representing one customer. 1,000 customers were male, and 9,000 customers were female. The final model had an adjusted R-squared of 0.27 and seven independent variables. Increasing the number of rows of data to 100,000 and rerunning the stepwise regression will most likely:
have negligible impact upon the adjusted R-squared.increase the impact of the male customers.change the heteroskedasticity of the residuals in a favorable manner.decrease the number of independent variables in the final model.
A clothing company wants to use analytics to decide which customers to send a promotional catalogue in order to attain a targeted response rate. Which of the following techniques would be the most appropriate to use for making this decision?
Integer programmingLogistic regressionAnalysis of varianceLinear regression
Which of the following is an effective optimization method?
Analysis of variance (ANOVA)Generalized linear regression model (GLM)Box-Jenkins Method (ARIMA)Mixed integer programming (MIP)
A box and whisker plot for a dataset will most clearly show:
the difference between the second quartile and the median.the 90% confidence interval around the mean.where the [actual-predicted] error value is not zero.if the data is skewed and, if so, in which direction.
In the initial project meeting with a client, which of the following is the most important information to obtain?
Timeline and implementation planAnalytical model to useBusiness issue and project goalAvailable budget
A company is considering designing a new automobile. Their options are a design based on current gasoline engine technology or a government proposed “Green” technology. You are a government official whose job is to encourage automakers to adopt the “Green” technology. You cannot provide funding for development or production costs, but you can provide a subsidy for every car sold. The development costs and the wholesale price, in USD (dollars), of the cars are shown in the table below:
Gasoline Technology
“Green” Technology
Wholesale Price/vehicle $25,000 $40,000
Production Cost/vehicle $15,000 $35,000
Fixed Development Cost $100,000,000 $200,000,000
How large a subsidy per vehicle sold will be required, assuming there will be enough demand to motivate the switch?
Greater than $5,000Less than $5,000Cannot be determinedEqual to $5,000
A furniture maker would like to determine the most profitable mix of items to produce. There are well-known budgetary constraints. Each piece of furniture is made of a predetermined amount of material with known costs, and demand is known. Which of the following analytical techniques is the most appropriate one to solve this problem?
OptimizationMultiple regressionData miningForecasting
You have simulated the NPV of a decision. It ranges between -$10 million and +$10 million. To best present the likelihood of possible outcomes, you should:
present a single NPV estimate to avoid confusion.present a histogram to show the distribution of various NPV estimates.trim all outliers to present the most balanced diagram.relax constraints associated with extreme points in the simulation.
A company ships products from a single dock at their warehouse. The time to load shipments depends on the experience of the crew, products being shipped and weather. The company thinks there is significant unmet demand for their products and would like to build another dock in order to meet this demand. They ask you to build a model and determine if the revenue from the additional products sold will cover the cost of the second dock within two years of it becoming operational. Which of the following is the MOST appropriate modeling approach?
Optimization because it is a transportation problem.Optimization because the company’s objective is to maximize profit and because capacity at the dock is a limited resource.Forecasting because you can determine the throughput at the dock, calculate the net revenue and compare this with the cost of the new dock.Discrete event simulation because there are a sequence of discrete random events through time.
Two investors who have the same information about the stock market buy an equal number of shares of a stock. Which of the following statements must be true?
The risks for the two investors are statistically independent.Both investors are subject to the same risks.Both investors are subject to the same uncertainty.If the investors are optimistic, they should have borrowed, rather than bought the shares.
A project seeks to build a predictive data-mining model of customer profitability based upon a series of independent variables including customer transaction history, demographics, and externally purchased credit-scoring information. There are currently 100,000 unique customers available for use in building the predictive model. Which of the following strategies would reflect the BEST allocation of these 100,000 customer data points?
Use 70,000 randomly selected data points when building the model, and hold the remaining 30,000 out as a test dataset.Build the model using all 100,000 data points.Randomly partition the data into 4 datasets of equal size, build four models and take their average.Use 1,000 randomly selected data points when building the model.
Conjoint analysis in market research applications can:
give its best estimates of customer preference structure based on in-depth interviews with a small number of carefully chosen subjects.only trade off relative importance to customers of features with similar scales.allow calculation of relative importance of varying features and attributes to customers.only trade off among a limited number of attributes and levels.
One of the main advantages of tree-based models and neural networks is that they:
are easy to interpret, use, and explain.build models with higher R-squared than other regression techniques.reveal interactions without having to explicitly build them into the model.can be modeled even when there is a significant amount of missing data.
The monthly profit made by a clothing manufacturer is proportional to the monthly demand, up to a maximum demand of 1000 units, which corresponds to the plant producing at full capacity. (Any excess demand over 1000 units will be satisfied by some other manufacturer, and hence yield no additional profit.) The monthly demand is uncertain, but the average demand is reliably estimated at 1000 units. At this level of demand the monthly profit is $3,000,000. Which of the following statements must be true of the expected monthly profit, P?
P can have any positive value.P is possibly greater than $3,000,000.P is equal to $3,000,000.P is less than $3,000,000.
After building a predictive model and testing it on new data, an under prediction by a forecasting system can be detected by its:
negative-squared.bias.mean absolute deviation.mean squared error.
All times in the decision tree below are given in hours. What is the expected travel time (in hours) of the optimal (minimum travel time) decision?
7.86.97.47.0
An analytics professional is responsible for maintaining a simulation model that is used to determine the staffing levels required for a specific operational business process. Assuming that the operational team always uses the number of staff determined by the model, which of the following is the most important maintenance activity?
Ensure that all of the model input data items are available when needed.Determine if there has been a change in model accuracy over time.Ensure that all users are reviewing the model results in a timely fashion.Determine that the model’s reports are understood by the users.
A segmentation of customers who shop at a retail store may be performed using which of the following methods?
Monte Carlo Markov Chain and ANOVAClustering, factor and control chartsDecision tree and recursive function analysesClustering and decision tree
In the diagram below, what is true of Strategy B compared to Strategy A?
Strategy B exhibits stochastic (probabilistic) dominance over Strategy A.Strategy B has the same downside risk as Strategy A since the curves have the same shape.Strategy B must have the same uncertainties impacting it as Strategy A because the curves are so similar in shape.Strategy A exhibits stochastic (probabilistic) dominance over strategy B.
Each month you generate a list of marketing leads for direct mail campaigns. Which of the following should you do before the list is used?
Exclude people who were on the list the previous month.Retain x% of the leads as control for performance measurement.Remove opt-outs.Exclude people who were never on the list.
When analyzing responses of a survey of why people like a certain restaurant, factor analysis could reduce the dimension in which of the following ways?
Collapse several survey questions regarding food taste, health value, ingredients and consistency into one general unobserved "food quality" variable.Condense similar survey respondent answers into clusters of like-minded customers for market segment analysis.Reduce the variability of individual subject ratings by centering each respondent’s ratings around his or her average rating.Decrease variability by analyzing inter-rater reliability on the question items before offering the survey to a wide number of respondents.
A preferred method or best practice for organizing data in a data warehouse for reporting and analysis is:
transactional-based modeling.multidimensional modeling.relation-based modeling.tuple-based modeling.

	Gasoline Technology	“Green” Technology
Wholesale Price/vehicle	$25,000	$40,000
Production Cost/vehicle	$15,000	$35,000
Fixed Development Cost	$100,000,000	$200,000,000

Sample Test

Gasoline Technology

“Green” Technology

Distribution of Sample Questions Per Domain