GT ISYE 6501
ISYE 6501 Midterm 1 Exam Study Guide
Questions and Answers Graded 2025
What do descriptive questions ask? -Correct Answer ✔what happened
what do predictive questions ask? -Correct Answer ✔what will happen; what will
google stock price be
what do prescriptive questions ask? -Correct Answer ✔what should we do, or
actions would be best...where to put traffic lights
what is a model -Correct Answer ✔real-life situation expressed as math
what do classifiers help you do? -Correct Answer ✔differentiate
what is a soft classifier and when is it used? -Correct Answer ✔in some cases,
there won't be a line that separates all of the labeled examples. So we use a
classifier that minimizes the number of mistakes.
What does it mean when the classifier/decision boundary is almost parallel to the
vertical x-axis? -Correct Answer ✔The horizontal attribute is all that is needed.
What does it mean when the classifier/decision boundary is almost parallel to the
horizontal x-axis? -Correct Answer ✔The vertical attribute is all that is needed.
what is time series data? -Correct Answer ✔the same data recorded over time often
recorded at equal intervals
what is quantitative data? -Correct Answer ✔number with a meaning: higher
means more, lower means less; age, sales, temperature, income
GT ISYE 6501
,GT ISYE 6501
what is categorical data? -Correct Answer ✔numbers w/o meaning (zip codes, non-
numeric (hair color), binary data (male/female)
Which of these is time series data?
A. The average cost of house in the US every year since 1820.
B. The height of each professional basketball player in the NBA at the start of the
season -Correct Answer ✔A
Which of these is structured data?
A. The contents of a person's Twitter feed
B. The amount of money in a person bank -Correct Answer ✔B
What is structured data? -Correct Answer ✔data that can be stored in a structured
way; neat
What is unstructured data -Correct Answer ✔data not easily described and stored
like audio files
A survey of 25 people recorded each person's family size and type of car. Which of
these is a data point?
A. The 14th person's family size and car type
B. The 14th person's family size
C. The car type of each person -Correct Answer ✔A. observation/record of
measurements for a single member of a population or data set. In the standard
tabular format, a row of data.
The farther the wrongly classified point is from the line...... -Correct Answer ✔The
bigger the mistake we've made
The term including the margin gets larger so the importance of a large margin out
weights avoiding mistakes and classifying known data samples -Correct Answer
✔As lambda gets larger
GT ISYE 6501
, GT ISYE 6501
Each column is information about what? -Correct Answer ✔An observation
What is a Support Vector Macine? -Correct Answer ✔Basic Machine Learning;
classifying a binary response based on a set of attributes and data points.
In SVM, do we scale the data? -Correct Answer ✔Must scale the data!
In SVM, what is C? -Correct Answer ✔C Value or Cost - this is our tradeoff factor
between correctness and margin
What is Box Cox Transformation? -Correct Answer ✔useful for transforming a
response to eliminate heteroscedasticity; logarithmic transformation; stretches out
the smaller range to enlarge its variability; shrinks the larger range to reduce its
variability. The idea is to find the best value of lambda; first check the Q-Q plot to
see if you need to do it.
What is hteroscedasticity? -Correct Answer ✔Unequal variance; might cause bias
in our data b/c variance at the upper end can make estimation errors larger and
push the model to fit those data points better
When should detrending be considered? -Correct Answer ✔Response, Predictors,
Factor-based model, regression, SVM, etc. to analyze time series data
How to detrend -Correct Answer ✔Factor by Factor; i.e.: simple linear regression
Price = 45,600 +23.2 * Year
Detrend Price = Actual Price - (45,600 +23.2*Year)
What is commong scaling -Correct Answer ✔data between 0 and 1 which is
linearly
what is standard scaling -Correct Answer ✔scaling to normal distribution: mean of
0, std = 1; standardization
GT ISYE 6501
ISYE 6501 Midterm 1 Exam Study Guide
Questions and Answers Graded 2025
What do descriptive questions ask? -Correct Answer ✔what happened
what do predictive questions ask? -Correct Answer ✔what will happen; what will
google stock price be
what do prescriptive questions ask? -Correct Answer ✔what should we do, or
actions would be best...where to put traffic lights
what is a model -Correct Answer ✔real-life situation expressed as math
what do classifiers help you do? -Correct Answer ✔differentiate
what is a soft classifier and when is it used? -Correct Answer ✔in some cases,
there won't be a line that separates all of the labeled examples. So we use a
classifier that minimizes the number of mistakes.
What does it mean when the classifier/decision boundary is almost parallel to the
vertical x-axis? -Correct Answer ✔The horizontal attribute is all that is needed.
What does it mean when the classifier/decision boundary is almost parallel to the
horizontal x-axis? -Correct Answer ✔The vertical attribute is all that is needed.
what is time series data? -Correct Answer ✔the same data recorded over time often
recorded at equal intervals
what is quantitative data? -Correct Answer ✔number with a meaning: higher
means more, lower means less; age, sales, temperature, income
GT ISYE 6501
,GT ISYE 6501
what is categorical data? -Correct Answer ✔numbers w/o meaning (zip codes, non-
numeric (hair color), binary data (male/female)
Which of these is time series data?
A. The average cost of house in the US every year since 1820.
B. The height of each professional basketball player in the NBA at the start of the
season -Correct Answer ✔A
Which of these is structured data?
A. The contents of a person's Twitter feed
B. The amount of money in a person bank -Correct Answer ✔B
What is structured data? -Correct Answer ✔data that can be stored in a structured
way; neat
What is unstructured data -Correct Answer ✔data not easily described and stored
like audio files
A survey of 25 people recorded each person's family size and type of car. Which of
these is a data point?
A. The 14th person's family size and car type
B. The 14th person's family size
C. The car type of each person -Correct Answer ✔A. observation/record of
measurements for a single member of a population or data set. In the standard
tabular format, a row of data.
The farther the wrongly classified point is from the line...... -Correct Answer ✔The
bigger the mistake we've made
The term including the margin gets larger so the importance of a large margin out
weights avoiding mistakes and classifying known data samples -Correct Answer
✔As lambda gets larger
GT ISYE 6501
, GT ISYE 6501
Each column is information about what? -Correct Answer ✔An observation
What is a Support Vector Macine? -Correct Answer ✔Basic Machine Learning;
classifying a binary response based on a set of attributes and data points.
In SVM, do we scale the data? -Correct Answer ✔Must scale the data!
In SVM, what is C? -Correct Answer ✔C Value or Cost - this is our tradeoff factor
between correctness and margin
What is Box Cox Transformation? -Correct Answer ✔useful for transforming a
response to eliminate heteroscedasticity; logarithmic transformation; stretches out
the smaller range to enlarge its variability; shrinks the larger range to reduce its
variability. The idea is to find the best value of lambda; first check the Q-Q plot to
see if you need to do it.
What is hteroscedasticity? -Correct Answer ✔Unequal variance; might cause bias
in our data b/c variance at the upper end can make estimation errors larger and
push the model to fit those data points better
When should detrending be considered? -Correct Answer ✔Response, Predictors,
Factor-based model, regression, SVM, etc. to analyze time series data
How to detrend -Correct Answer ✔Factor by Factor; i.e.: simple linear regression
Price = 45,600 +23.2 * Year
Detrend Price = Actual Price - (45,600 +23.2*Year)
What is commong scaling -Correct Answer ✔data between 0 and 1 which is
linearly
what is standard scaling -Correct Answer ✔scaling to normal distribution: mean of
0, std = 1; standardization
GT ISYE 6501
