BIDA® Final Exam Study Tips

Congratulations on making it through the BIDA™ syllabus and beginning your preparation for the BIDA Final Exam. We acknowledge your hard work and commitment to developing the most vital skills required to kick start or advance your journey with business intelligence & data analysis.

This exam guide will provide you with all the information you need to understand what is expected, create a sound study plan, and successfully complete the final exam. Please note: There is a 30 day cool down between final exam attempts, so you should properly review and prepare before proceeding.

In this article, these are the frequently asked questions regarding the assessments:

• Reviewing Learning Materials
• Practice Questions
• About the Exam
• BIDA® Final Exam Topic Weights
• Time Management
• Important information about taking the exam

Reviewing Learning Materials ^

Review course materials – watch the video demonstrations and review the course presentations, exercises, and case studies. Since the examinable content spans 14 core and 4 prep courses, it is recommended that you take notes and organize them by topic. This will help you avoid wasting valuable exam time searching for key concepts or looking at course materials for the first time.

Practice Questions ^

Take the practice exam - The qualified assessments at the end of each course and in the practice exam will give you a good idea of the type of questions you can expect in the final exam, especially for the theory questions, which account for more than 75% of the final exam. We recommend re-taking the practice exam until the concepts become clear since learners have unlimited attempts.

About the Exam ^

There are two main sections in the final exam. In the first section, there are 50 Multiple Choice Questions drawn from a randomized question bank. The second section has 15 questions based on 4 case studies.

Exam Section 1: Randomized Questions

The difficulty level of the final exam questions will be similar to the qualified exams at the end of each course. 

Exam Section 2: Case studies

The four case studies in the second section of the final exam account for around 20% of the final exam. The questions will require you to be familiar with each of the core tools covered in the BIDA syllabus, along with basic commands, statements, and functions for each tool covered in the prep and core courses.

Each case study is based on one of the following tools:

Mandatory

  • Power Query
  • Power BI
  • Tableau

Choose One

  • SQL
  • Python

Tools required

  • SQL: Ensure that you have Azure Data Studio installed and that you are able to create a new connection using server details which will be provided in the exam.
  • Python: You will be provided with a .ipynb file. You should have Anaconda installed and be able to open the file using Jupyter Notebooks.
  • Tableau: You must have Tableau installed to be able to open a .twbx file.
  • Power BI: You will be provided with an Excel file (.xlsx) and a Power BI file (.pbix). You will need to import data from the Excel file to complete the analysis.
  • Power Query: You will be given an Excel file (.xlsx), and you will need to solve some problems using Power Query. If you are running MS Excel 2010/2013 on your machine, you need to install the Excel add-in. For MS Excel 2016 onwards, Power Query is an in-built feature that can be found under the Data tab.

BIDA® Final Exam Topic Weights ^

Note: The topic weights can vary slightly in the actual exam.

Time Management ^

The final exam is timed and takes 3 hours to complete, so it’s crucial to manage your time efficiently. On average, you should spend approximately 2 minutes on each theory question – the first 50 questions. The remaining 80 minutes will be adequate for answering the case-studies questions, provided you have the tools set up as recommended above. Also, note that once you submit your answer, you cannot navigate back and change it. Therefore, you should not spend too much time on a single question.

Important information about taking the exam ^

  • All questions are equally weighted.
  • There is no penalty or negative marking for incorrect answers.
  • Once you submit your answer, you cannot navigate back and change it.
  • Sitting for 3 hours can be physically exhausting, so be sure to sit in a comfortable setting with no distractions.
  • Have a snack and/or water close to keep you energized and well hydrated.
  • Review the BIDA™ Final Exam guide on the requirements and details.
  • Ensure that you have a stable network; if you have a brief outage, you can refresh the page and continue with your assessment. However, be aware that the exam counter will not stop during this time.
  • Don’t panic if you do not pass the exam on your first attempt - it can be retaken after 30 days.