Graded Quiz: Introduction to Vector Databases and Chroma DB :Vector Databases for RAG: An Introduction (BM RAG and Agentic AI Professional Certificate) Answers 2025
Question 1
How do vector databases enhance recommendation systems?
❌ Simplify complex queries
✅ Enable efficient similarity searches for complex data types
❌ Provide more secure storage
❌ Support larger data volumes
Explanation:
Vector DBs perform fast similarity search on embeddings, ideal for recommendations.
Question 2
Key difference between vector DBs and traditional DBs:
❌ Traditional DBs optimized for numerical data
✅ Vector databases are designed to handle embeddings
❌ Vector DBs use relational tables
❌ Traditional DBs best for similarity search
Explanation:
Embeddings are high-dimensional vectors—vector DBs are built to store & search them efficiently.
Question 3
Which differentiates in-memory vector DBs?
✅ Store vectors directly in memory → faster queries
❌ Store vectors on disk
❌ Slower than others
❌ Do not support vector search
Explanation:
In-memory storage gives very fast read/query times.
Question 4
Which metric measures direction, not magnitude?
❌ Inner product
✅ Cosine distance
❌ Euclidean
❌ Dot product
Explanation:
Cosine distance evaluates the angle between vectors, ignoring magnitude.
Question 5
What does the direction of an embedding represent?
❌ Distance between unrelated items
❌ Frequency in dataset
✅ Topic or semantic meaning
❌ Strength of the item
Explanation:
Direction encodes semantic meaning, e.g., topics or conceptual relationships.
Question 6
Indexing vs Querying in Chroma DB:
❌ Indexing = input, querying = output
❌ Serve same purpose
✅ Indexing organizes data; querying retrieves based on semantic similarity
❌ Encrypt/decrypt data
Explanation:
Indexing builds efficient structures; querying finds nearest neighbor vectors.
Question 7
Role of embeddings in similarity search:
❌ Encrypt data
❌ Store metadata
❌ Increase database speed
✅ Convert data into a vector format that enables similarity comparison
Explanation:
Embeddings transform text/images/etc. into vectors so similarity algorithms can compare them.
🧾 Summary Table
| Q No. | Correct Answer | Key Concept |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Similarity search | Recommendation via vectors |
| 2 | Handles embeddings | Vector DB vs traditional DB |
| 3 | In-memory = faster | Vector DB storage type |
| 4 | Cosine distance | Direction-based metric |
| 5 | Semantic meaning | Vector direction |
| 6 | Indexing organizes; querying retrieves | Chroma DB roles |
| 7 | Embeddings enable comparison | Role of embeddings |