HSC Enterprise Computing Data Visualisation and Enterprise Project: exam question types

What this guide covers

Year 12 Enterprise Computing pairs Data Visualisation (reading, building and judging visual displays of data) with the Enterprise Project (planning, building, testing and maintaining a system). In the exam, both topics lean on vocabulary that has to be used precisely: a drill-down is not a roll-up, and a pilot is not a phased implementation. The practice quiz on this page drills those distinctions. The sections below show the question types behind it.

Question types you should expect

1. Is this visual misleading, and how?

You are shown (or told about) a chart and asked to identify bias or a design flaw. Check, in order: the axis (does it start at zero, is the scale even?), the range (has a time period been cherry-picked?), the data source (is it representative?), and the audience (will they read it as intended?). Then say how the flaw changes the conclusion and how to fix it.

Revise bias in data visualisation and user experience in data visualisation.

2. Name the operation or tool

OLAP operations are easy marks if you learn them as movements through a cube:

Tool-choice questions weigh cost, skills, data volume, interactivity, sharing and security. Revise hardware and software evolution and OLAP and evaluating visualisation tools and interrogating data.

3. Plan and justify an implementation

Scenario questions describe an organisation and ask which implementation method suits it. Match risk to method: parallel is safest but doubles the workload, direct is cheapest but riskiest, phased introduces one module at a time, and pilot trials the full system at one site or with one group. Always justify with a detail from the scenario, such as "patient safety means the hospital cannot risk losing records, so parallel is justified despite the extra work".

Revise implementation planning and requirements and development approaches.

4. Test, evaluate and maintain

Expect to produce test data for a stated rule. For a field that accepts 16 to 65 inclusive, a complete set is normal (30), boundary (15, 16, 65, 66) and invalid (a negative number, text, a blank). Maintenance types are also tested as definitions applied to a scenario: corrective fixes faults, adaptive responds to a changed environment, perfective adds requested improvements, and preventive reduces future risk.

Revise verifying and validating an enterprise system.

5. Read or draw a planning diagram

Know what each diagram shows: a Gantt chart shows tasks against time with dependencies; a data flow diagram shows external entities, processes, data stores and labelled data flows; a system flowchart shows the physical flow through inputs, processes, storage and outputs; a decision tree shows choices and outcomes. Revise project planning tools and thinking skills and managing and documenting an enterprise project.

Worked example

Question (exam style, 4 marks). A school canteen is replacing paper orders with an online ordering system. Recommend an implementation method and justify it.

Answer. A pilot implementation suits the canteen: run the online system with one year group first while the others keep paper orders. This limits the impact of any faults to a small group, lets staff learn the system under real conditions and produces feedback to fix problems before the full rollout. A direct changeover would be cheaper but risks students missing lunch if the system fails, and parallel running would double the canteen's workload at its busiest time.

Other dot points in these modules

Also revise purposes of data visualisation and identifying patterns, creating a secure data visualisation and data integrity, warehousing and big data in visualisation. Continue with the Data Science practice and the Intelligent Systems practice.