Predictive Analytics or simply analysis using what tool.

building reports webintelligence
1

I’m in the Business Intelligence Department, but practically speaking we’re the Reporting Department, your basic operational type of reports - lists, lists, and more lists.

I’m at an institution of higher learning, and a new project has come up for the Math Department. They want to know relationships between courses, grades, etc.

Examples:

  • if someone gets a D in Calc I, what’s the likelihood of graduation?  with various permutations, like taking Calc I again
  • what’s the likelihood of someone getting a D in Calc I, getting a D or F in Calc II
  • for placing incoming students in Pre-Calc or Calc I, what are the factors that indicate success? such as Verbal SAT

So I think I’ve targeted the right discipline (Analytics), but not sure where to take this project. Maybe this can be done in Lumira (which I only know how to spell).

Nevertheless, I was able to answer the first two questions with a simple WebI report. But I think the better solution is some engine where you throw in some data targeting specific outcomes, which, as I understand it, is predictive analytics.

gadsden_consulting :us: (BOB member since 2015-06-18)

2

So I was able to answer a question with WebI:

“What is the Graduation rate for students receiving a D in XXX courses, where the student did not repeat the course?”

pretty simple, actually, but did require some thought.

As per normal, the key is to ask the right question, then search for the answer.

So I can obviously answer some questions with WebI, but just wondered what do you think about the generic question, i.e., predicting outcomes by looking at history?

For this, would you hire a consultant and build a Predictive Analytics system? Do this in Lumira (which I know nothing about) or something else? or brute force this in WebI?
Grad rates with D's.png

gadsden_consulting :us: (BOB member since 2015-06-18)

3

SAP Analytics Cloud (formerly known as BusinessObjects Cloud) has predictive capabilities. I haven’t tried it (Predictive) myself, but it was demoed at Sapphire. There is probably a free trial version.

charlie :us: (BOB member since 2002-08-20)

4

Thanks, Chaz!

gadsden_consulting :us: (BOB member since 2015-06-18)