Data analytics

Data analytics is the process of inspecting, cleansing, transforming data with the goal of
discovering useful information. It involves identifying or discovering the trends and patterns
inherent in the data. Data is extracted and categorized to identify and analyse behavioural
data and patterns, and techniques vary according to organizational requirements.

Data analytics is also known as data analysis. Data analytics is primarily conducted in
business-to-consumer (B2C) applications. Global organizations collect and analyse data
associated with customers, business processes, market economics or practical experience.
Data is categorized, stored and analyzed to study purchasing trends and patterns.

Types of data analytics applications

At a high level, data analytics methodologies include exploratory data analysis (EDA), which
aims to find patterns and relationships in data, and confirmatory data analysis (CDA), which
applies statistical techniques to determine whether hypotheses about a data set are true or
false. EDA is often compared to detective work, while CDA is akin to the work of a judge or
jury during a court trial.

Data analytics can also be separated into quantitative data analysis and qualitative data
analysis. The former involves analysis of numerical data with quantifiable variables that can
be compared or measured statistically. The qualitative approach is more interpretive -- it
focuses on understanding the content of non-numerical data like text, images, audio and
video, including common phrases, themes and points of view.

Data analytics initiatives support a wide variety of business uses. For example, banks and
credit card companies analyse withdrawal and spending patterns to prevent fraud and identity
theft.

E-commerce companies and marketing services providers do clickstream analysis to identify

website visitors who are more likely to buy a particular product or service based on
navigation and page-viewing patterns. Mobile network operators examine customer data to
forecast churn so they can take steps to prevent defections to business rivals; to boost
customer relationship management efforts, they and other companies also engage in CRM
analytics to segment customers for marketing campaigns and equip call centre workers with
up-to-date information about callers. Healthcare organizations mine patient data to evaluate
the effectiveness of treatments for cancer and other diseases.

Data analysis process

Data collection. Data scientists identify data that will be needed for a particular analytics
application. Data is then assembled for use with or without the help of data engineers. Data is
then transformed into a common format and loaded into analytics system like Hadoop cluster,
NoSQL database or data warehouse.

The next step is Data profiling and cleansing. This is where data is checked for errors and
duplicates. Data is prepared to manipulate and organize the data for the planned analytics use.
Necessary data governance policies are applied to ensure that the data is compatible with the
corporate standards.

It is after this that data analytics begins. Analytics models are used incorporating the use of
predictive modelling tools or programming languages like python, Scala, r and SQL. Data is
tested for accuracy until the data performs as intended.

The last step is communicating the results of data analytics to executives and other users for
decision-making. Data visualisation techniques helps in the process of communicating the
results using charts and other infographics to make it easier for findings to be understood.

The following is a diagram that explains data analytics process