13.1 What the paper looks like
Three sections. Most of the marks are in the practical work — this is a test of what you can build, not what you can recite.
| Section | Type | Marks | What it asks |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | Multiple choice | 10 | Concepts from Chapters 1–2: good tables, chart choice, colour, what Power BI is for. |
| B | Short answer | 10 | Short, clear written answers with examples — comparing chart types, spotting problems in a bad visual. |
| C | Practical tasks | 50 | Case studies with real datasets: build charts to a specification, then interpret them. |
| Total | 70 | Worth 30% of the course · pass mark 14 |
● Section C is 71% of the paper
Fifty of the seventy marks come from building and explaining visuals. Revise by opening the software and building charts, not by rereading slides.
13.2 How Section C is usually structured
Expect several case studies, each following the same shape:
- A short business scenario and a stated objective.
- Instructions to construct a specific chart with exact formatting — a centred title, legend in a named position, data labels showing value and percentage.
- A question asking you to read the chart and explain what it shows — usually worth 2 marks.
● Both halves are marked
Building a beautiful chart and skipping the explanation loses marks, and so does the reverse. Always write the sentence — which category is largest, what the percentage is, what the trend means.
Follow formatting instructions literally. If the paper says “legend positioned top-right, stacked, bold, size 14”, every one of those is a mark you either earn or don't. Read the requirement twice, then check your chart against it before moving on.
13.3 Revision map
Go back to the weeks, not to a summary. Each row links straight to the lesson.
| Revise | From | Why it's testable |
|---|---|---|
| Exploratory vs explanatory analysis | Week 1 | Section A concepts. |
| Features of a good table; tables vs figures | Week 2 | Appears in Section A and B almost every time. |
| Chart choice — tables, points, lines | Week 3 | “Which chart is most suitable for…” |
| Bars, histogram, boxplot, geospatial | Week 4 | Section B comparisons: histogram vs boxplot, line vs bar. |
| Cautious elements — too many colours, 3-D, pies with many slices | Week 4 | The classic Section B case study: “what's wrong with this pie chart?” |
| Power BI: import, Power Query, formatting visuals | Week 9 | Section C, every question. |
| Line, bar, clustered/stacked, histogram, boxplot, maps in Power BI | Week 10 | Section C — the chart you're asked to build. |
| Dashboards, slicers, cross-filtering | Week 11 | Longer Section C tasks. |
13.4 On the day
- Check Power BI Desktop works on the machine you'll use — before the test, not during it.
- Read all three sections first and budget your time by marks: Section C deserves most of it.
- Answer in the booklet provided, arranged in order.
- For every chart: build it, format it to spec, then write the interpretation sentence.
- Save your completed work as a PDF named FullName_StudentID.pdf for submission.
- Bring nothing unauthorised into the room.
● The filename is part of the instructions
Past papers specify FullName_StudentID.pdf exactly. Get it right — a file your lecturer can't identify is a problem you don't want on results day.