M4.3 module quiz
Ten questions. 80% to pass (8 of 10). Open book, unlimited retakes.
Answers are collapsed under each question. Answer first, then check.
Q1
The most common bad denominator is:
A. Completed orders in the period
B. Monthly active users of the application itself today
C. An infrastructure-derived number such as instance count
D. Signups in the funnel
Show answer
Correct: C. It moves with the cost, so cost-per-unit stays flat no matter what you optimize and the ratio cannot detect improvement.
Q2
A good denominator must:
A. Be easy to collect automatically
B. Move independently of the cost being measured
C. Be supplied directly by the cloud provider
D. Grow monotonically over time
Show answer
Correct: B. Independence is the property that makes the ratio informative. Everything else is convenience.
Q3
The numerator for most orgs should be:
A. Total cloud spend for the org
B. Compute spend only, not storage
C. The cost scoped to the service the denominator describes
D. Billed cost, including all of the taxes and the fees
Show answer
Correct: C. Dividing total org spend by one product’s MAU produces a number that moves when an unrelated team scales, which makes it useless for the team that owns it.
Q4
Changing the numerator’s definition mid-series:
A. Is fine as long as it is documented
B. Breaks the trend, which is the entire value of the metric
C. Requires the provider’s approval first
D. Improves the accuracy of the current period figure
Show answer
Correct: B. Documenting the change does not restore comparability. If the definition must change, the honest move is to restate history or start a new series.
Q5
The first unit-economics dashboard should lead with:
A. A table listing every single service that is in use
B. A forecast for next quarter
C. A big number, a trend, a comparison and annotations
D. Per-team cost breakdowns
Show answer
Correct: C. Annotations matter most: a trend line without the events that caused its inflections is a shape nobody can act on.
Q6
Forecasting unit cost by extrapolation is weakest when:
A. The series is already long enough to read from
B. The denominator is stable
C. Costs are falling steadily
D. A step change in architecture or pricing is coming
Show answer
Correct: D. Extrapolation assumes the mechanism continues. Driver-based and scenario methods exist for exactly the case where it will not.
Q7
A rising cost-per-unit while total cost falls means:
A. The denominator is falling faster than the cost
B. An error in the underlying data
C. Optimization is simply working as intended
D. The numerator changed unexpectedly
Show answer
Correct: A. Which is frequently the more important story: shrinking usage with a shrinking bill can look like success on the cost chart and be a business problem.
Q8
Communicating unit economics to finance should emphasise:
A. Instance types and their measured utilisation levels today
B. The relationship between spend and business volume, and the trend
C. Tag coverage across the estate
D. Which provider discounts apply
Show answer
Correct: B. Finance cares whether the cost of serving a customer is improving. Infrastructure detail answers a question they did not ask.
Q9
The most common communication mistake is:
A. Showing far too few charts on the dashboard page itself
B. Using absolute numbers
C. Reporting only monthly
D. Presenting the ratio without the two series that compose it
Show answer
Correct: D. A ratio can move for two opposite reasons, and an audience that cannot see which one will assume the flattering interpretation.
Q10
Per-team unit economics requires:
A. Cost scoped to the team and a denominator meaningful for that team
B. A single org-wide denominator
C. Chargeback already in place
D. Identical denominators used across all of the different teams
Show answer
Correct: A. Forcing one denominator across teams produces a number that is meaningful for one of them and noise for the rest.
What’s next
Back to Unit economics.