Classify questions before choosing methods

short · 25 min · Objective 3.1

Task

Sort six business questions into comparison, composition, distribution and relationship, and name the method and chart each calls for. Choosing the family first is what keeps the method from being chosen before the question.

Steps

  1. Classify these six questions: (1) Which region sold the most? (2) What share of revenue does each category bring? (3) How spread out are order values? (4) Do more satisfied customers recommend us more? (5) How did orders change month by month? (6) What proportion of customers are Business customers?
  2. For each, decide the family first -- comparison, composition, distribution or relationship -- and only then the method and the chart.
  3. Write lab/choose/answers.csv with header question,family,method,chart, numbering the questions 1 to 6.

Verify

These checks run in a POSIX shell with Python 3: Terminal on macOS or Linux, and on Windows Git Bash (it comes with Git for Windows) or WSL. On Windows, python3 is often a Microsoft Store placeholder that prints “Python was not found”; run alias python3=py in Git Bash first.

awk -F, 'NR>1 {print $1": "$2}' lab/choose/answers.csv
awk -F, 'NR>1 {f[$2]++} END {for (k in f) print k": "f[k]}' lab/choose/answers.csv | sort

Questions 1 and 5 are comparisons (5 over time), 2 and 6 composition, 3 distribution and 4 relationship: two comparisons, two compositions, one distribution and one relationship. The chart follows -- bars, a line, stacked bars or a pie, a histogram, a scatter plot -- once the family is named.

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