Here are 50+ multiple-choice questions (MCQs) with answers based on the content provided about decision analytics and data mining in the gaming industry case study:
What is Decision Analytics primarily based on?
a) Educated guesswork
b) Fact-based decision-making
c) Hypotheses
d) Market surveys
Answer: b) Fact-based decision-making
What helps link operational processes to strategic outcomes in Decision Analytics?
a) Customer surveys
b) Dashboards
c) Performance modeling
d) Data warehouses
Answer: c) Performance modeling
Which company implemented Decision Analytics to gain a competitive advantage in the 1990s?
a) Wynn Resorts
b) Harrah’s Entertainment
c) Bellagio
d) Luxor
Answer: b) Harrah’s Entertainment
What did Harrah's use to collect extensive customer data?
a) Surveys
b) Hotel bookings
c) Total Rewards program
d) Online feedback
Answer: c) Total Rewards program
How did Harrah’s Entertainment distinguish itself from competitors in the 1990s?
a) By acquiring more resorts
b) By using CRM and analytics
c) By offering cheaper rooms
d) By increasing marketing spend
Answer: b) By using CRM and analytics
What type of data did Harrah's collect from its customers?
a) Social media activity
b) Casino games played
c) Email communications
d) Online browsing history
Answer: b) Casino games played
Which technology helped Harrah's make marketing decisions based on what they know?
a) Total Rewards program
b) Casino software
c) Predictive analytics
d) Slot machine algorithms
Answer: a) Total Rewards program
What was the primary advantage of Harrah's data-driven approach?
a) Higher earnings per guest
b) More expensive rooms
c) Better advertising campaigns
d) Higher customer satisfaction
Answer: a) Higher earnings per guest
How did Harrah's Entertainment increase revenue per available room?
a) By offering more discounts
b) By holding rooms for last-minute, high-paying customers
c) By expanding its casino floor
d) By offering free hotel stays
Answer: b) By holding rooms for last-minute, high-paying customers
In which year did Harrah's Entertainment raise its revenue per available room to $268?
a) 2000
b) 2005
c) 1995
d) 2010
Answer: b) 2005
Which customer segment was the most profitable for Harrah's Entertainment?
a) 35-year-old businessmen
b) 25-year-old tourists
c) 65-year-old ladies from Indiana
d) Teenagers on holiday
Answer: c) 65-year-old ladies from Indiana
What feature of CRM did Harrah's Entertainment use in real time?
a) Instant customer feedback
b) Instant coupons and offers
c) Social media marketing
d) Personalized advertisements
Answer: b) Instant coupons and offers
Why is data mining important in modern business?
a) For making random decisions
b) To handle small amounts of data
c) Due to explosive growth of data
d) To reduce marketing costs
Answer: c) Due to explosive growth of data
What is the primary goal of data mining?
a) Extract unknown patterns from data
b) Collect personal information
c) Reduce data size
d) Increase database efficiency
Answer: a) Extract unknown patterns from data
What is an application of data mining in marketing?
a) Fraud detection
b) Market basket analysis
c) Scientific simulation
d) Remote sensing
Answer: b) Market basket analysis
Which of the following is NOT a task in data mining?
a) Classification
b) Clustering
c) Fraud detection
d) Web design
Answer: d) Web design
What type of learning is classification considered?
a) Unsupervised
b) Reinforced
c) Supervised
d) Mixed
Answer: c) Supervised
What is clustering used for in data mining?
a) Predicting outcomes
b) Grouping similar items
c) Enhancing visual data
d) Increasing data storage
Answer: b) Grouping similar items
What is the key requirement for clustering?
a) Hypothesis testing
b) Data validation
c) Similarity measure between instances
d) Data encryption
Answer: c) Similarity measure between instances
What is the primary goal of classification?
a) Create new classes of data
b) Assign records to predefined classes
c) Reduce data redundancy
d) Organize data into clusters
Answer: b) Assign records to predefined classes
Which of the following is a supervised learning algorithm?
a) K-means
b) Neural networks
c) Hierarchical clustering
d) Expectation Maximization
Answer: b) Neural networks
What is a major application of data mining in risk analysis?
a) Market segmentation
b) Customer retention
c) Transaction recording
d) Web scraping
Answer: b) Customer retention
What does the term “interesting patterns” refer to in data mining?
a) Patterns easily understood by machines
b) Patterns with trivial value
c) Patterns that validate hypotheses
d) Patterns only visible in large data sets
Answer: c) Patterns that validate hypotheses
Which function is commonly used to measure similarity in clustering for numeric data?
a) Cosine similarity
b) Euclidean distance
c) Jaccard coefficient
d) Hamming distance
Answer: b) Euclidean distance
What is the difference between classification and clustering?
a) Classification uses prior knowledge of classes; clustering does not
b) Clustering requires supervised learning; classification does not
c) Clustering is faster than classification
d) Classification does not require algorithms
Answer: a) Classification uses prior knowledge of classes; clustering does not
What software tool is recommended for performing classification tasks in R?
a) ‘Cluster’ package
b) ‘Classify’ package
c) ‘Predict’ package
d) ‘Tree’ package
Answer: b) ‘Classify’ package
What kind of patterns does data mining aim to extract?
a) Trivial and redundant
b) Interesting and useful
c) Random and implicit
d) Predictive and trivial
Answer: b) Interesting and useful
Which classification method is commonly used in supervised learning?
a) K-means clustering
b) Decision tree classifier
c) Jaccard coefficient
d) Hierarchical clustering
Answer: b) Decision tree classifier
In Harrah’s real-time CRM, what is offered to a customer losing at slot machines?
a) Bonus points
b) Instant coupons
c) Extra chips
d) A free holiday
Answer: b) Instant coupons
What does “The Right Heads in Right Beds” refer to?
a) Aligning employees to jobs
b) Optimizing hotel room sales for high-revenue customers
c) Casino floor management
d) Allocating marketing budgets
Answer: b) Optimizing hotel room sales for high-revenue customers
What was Harrah’s main competitive disadvantage in the early 1990s?
a) Lack of customer base
b) Insufficient cash and missing earnings targets
c) High employee turnover
d) Limited technology integration
Answer: b) Insufficient cash and missing earnings targets
What did Harrah's Entertainment primarily use to improve customer experience?
a) Higher staff-to-guest ratio
b) Data analytics and CRM
c) Expensive advertising campaigns
d) Increasing gambling tables
Answer: b) Data analytics and CRM
Harrah's transition from "We Think" to "We Know" was made possible by which program?
a) Hotel Rewards Program
b) Casino Loyalty Program
c) Total Rewards Program
d) VIP Program
Answer: c) Total Rewards Program
What kind of data was Harrah's Entertainment collecting through the Total Rewards Program?
a) Social media engagement
b) Casino winnings and losses, hotel stays, dining habits
c) Customer credit scores
d) Online browsing history
Answer: b) Casino winnings and losses, hotel stays, dining habits
In the context of Harrah’s strategy, what does CRM stand for?
a) Cash Reserve Management
b) Customer Relationship Management
c) Casino Resource Management
d) Customer Retention Management
Answer: b) Customer Relationship Management
Which data collection methods did Harrah's use to gather customer information?
a) Mobile app interactions
b) Customer feedback forms
c) Cards inserted into slot machines and restaurant cash registers
d) Video surveillance
Answer: c) Cards inserted into slot machines and restaurant cash registers
Why did Harrah’s hold hotel rooms for last-minute guests during the holidays?
a) To offer last-minute discounts
b) To ensure rooms were available for high-spending customers
c) To avoid overbooking
d) To increase brand loyalty
Answer: b) To ensure rooms were available for high-spending customers
Which customers did Harrah’s identify as highly profitable based on their data?
a) Young professionals
b) Tourists from California
c) 65-year-old ladies from Indiana
d) Business travelers
Answer: c) 65-year-old ladies from Indiana
How did Harrah’s Entertainment use real-time CRM to improve customer retention?
a) Offering personalized advertisements
b) Sending real-time notifications
c) Providing instant offers like complimentary stays or drinks
d) Engaging customers through social media
Answer: c) Providing instant offers like complimentary stays or drinks
What is one major reason for the explosive growth of data in business?
a) Increased reliance on paper records
b) Automated data collection tools
c) Manual data entry
d) Reduced use of technology
Answer: b) Automated data collection tools
Which of the following is NOT a major source of data for mining purposes?
a) Scientific simulations
b) Social media feeds
c) Printed books
d) E-commerce transactions
Answer: c) Printed books
Data mining is primarily concerned with extracting patterns that are:
a) Trivial and explicit
b) Unknown and potentially useful
c) Already known to analysts
d) Based on guesswork
Answer: b) Unknown and potentially useful
Which of the following is an application of data mining in fraud detection?
a) Classifying customer preferences
b) Identifying unusual patterns in financial transactions
c) Increasing sales conversions
d) Predicting customer lifetime value
Answer: b) Identifying unusual patterns in financial transactions
Which step in data mining involves identifying the data relevant to the analysis?
a) Pattern Evaluation
b) Data Integration
c) Selection
d) Data Mining
Answer: c) Selection
Why are not all discovered patterns in data mining considered interesting?
a) Some patterns are too complex for computers
b) They may not be novel or useful
c) Patterns are not always accurate
d) The data may be incomplete
Answer: b) They may not be novel or useful
In supervised learning, what is the purpose of the test set?
a) To create new data
b) To validate the accuracy of the model
c) To train the model
d) To cluster the data
Answer: b) To validate the accuracy of the model
Which of the following tasks is NOT associated with clustering in data mining?
a) Assigning predefined class labels
b) Grouping similar records
c) Measuring similarity between data points
d) Identifying natural groupings in data
Answer: a) Assigning predefined class labels
What method is typically used to perform clustering for numeric data?
a) Cosine similarity
b) Decision trees
c) Euclidean distance
d) Regression analysis
Answer: c) Euclidean distance
What distinguishes classification from clustering?
a) Clustering uses supervised learning, classification does not
b) Classification requires prior knowledge of class labels, clustering does not
c) Clustering creates labeled datasets, classification does not
d) Both are unsupervised learning tasks
Answer: b) Classification requires prior knowledge of class labels, clustering does not
In Harrah’s strategy, how was customer data used to influence hotel room availability?
a) To predict when guests would leave
b) To offer discounts based on booking times
c) To reserve rooms for high-revenue customers during peak periods
d) To reduce room rates during the offseason
Answer: c) To reserve rooms for high-revenue customers during peak periods
Which clustering method relies on partitioning data based on distance?
a) Hierarchical clustering
b) Decision tree
c) K-means
d) Neural networks
Answer: c) K-means
What type of data is suitable for hierarchical clustering?
a) Continuous data only
b) Categorical data only
c) Both categorical and numeric data
d) Neither categorical nor numeric data
Answer: c) Both categorical and numeric data
What is the key benefit of using real-time CRM, as demonstrated by Harrah’s Entertainment?
a) Reducing operational costs
b) Engaging with customers immediately through offers
c) Creating long-term marketing campaigns
d) Lowering customer acquisition costs
Answer: b) Engaging with customers immediately through offers
Which of the following is NOT a classification method?
a) Nearest neighbor (k-NN)
b) Decision trees
c) K-means
d) Neural networks
Answer: c) K-means
What was the main reason Harrah’s Entertainment started using data analytics?
a) To reduce operational costs
b) To create personalized customer experiences
c) To offer cheaper services
d) To expand its casino offerings
Answer: b) To create personalized customer experiences
