Evaluation of an approach for teaching formal concept analysis

This paper describes the evaluation of coursework set for final year degree students designed to teach Formal Concept Analysis (FCA). The usefulness of this approach is discussed with respect to its application in future iterations of the coursework. The source data was the result of a simulation between competing student teams undertaken on a mainstream ERP system provided by the business software vendor SAP A.G. and using the ERPsim software provided by ERPsim Lab at HEC Montreal. The simulation generated data on which Business Intelligence (BI) is typically based and is representative of business activity. The data generated by the simulation exercise was not specifically for FCA, thus it provides a meaningful test of FCA in BI.