More on this: Text Analysis and Natural Language Processing With Python Why You Should Learn Data Analysis Skills Text analysis: Extract machine-readable information from unstructured text (e.g., PDFs, word processing documents, emails). Learn more: Data Mining with R: Go from Beginner to Advanced! Learn more: An Introduction to Factor Analysisĭata mining: The process of finding trends, patterns, and correlations in large data sets. Learn more about this method here: Regression Analysis / Data Analytics in Regressionįactor analysis: Condenses several variables into just a few to make data analysis easier. Regression analysis: A set of statistical processes that allows you to examine the relationship between two or more variables. More on this here: Cluster Analysis and Unsupervised Machine Learning in Python Next, what are the methods data analysts use to accomplish these various objectives? Here’s a quick introduction to data analytics methods.Ĭluster analysis: Organizes data into groups, or clusters, that share common characteristics. ☝️ Back to the table of contents Data Analysis Methods Prescriptive analysis: Takes insights found from all types of data analysis (descriptive, exploratory, diagnostic, predictive) to determine the best course of action. Examples include sales forecasting and risk assessment. It uses data, statistics, and machine learning algorithms and techniques to figure out the likelihood of future outcomes based on data. Predictive analysis: This type is often used more by data scientists, rather than data analysts. Another way to think of this is the initial investigation phase.ĭiagnostic analysis: Takes the insights found from both descriptive and exploratory analytics and investigates further to find the causes. Examples include monthly revenue reports and KPI dashboards.Įxploratory analysis: Exploratory analysis dives a bit deeper than descriptive analytics, skimming for detectable patterns and trends in data. Here are five kinds of data analytics.ĭescriptive analysis: Descriptive analytics is designed to answer the question “What happened?” The goal of descriptive analytics is to summarize data in a meaningful and descriptive manner, not to make any predictions. What is the key objective of data analysis? That depends on what type of data analysis skills you’re using. ☝️ Back to the table of contents Types of Data Analysis (Of course, it certainly won’t hurt if you already have experience with coding, math, or statistics!)īecoming a data analyst can also open the door to lucrative careers like data science and data engineering (just to name a few) as you gain more experience on the job. Is data analytics hard? Well, the great thing about data analysis is that it’s more of an entry-level role, meaning you can jump right in with basic knowledge after you take some data analysis courses for beginners and sharpen a few key skills. Data analysts may report their findings to project managers, department heads, and senior-level business executives to help them make decisions and spot patterns and trends.
Analyze and interpret the data using statistical tools (i.e.This may include plotting the data out, creating pivot tables, and so on. Manipulate data using Excel or Google Sheets.Perform data cleaning/data wrangling to improve data quality and prepare it for analysis and interpretation–getting data into the right format, getting rid of unnecessary data, correcting spelling mistakes, etc.Collect the right data to help answer this question.Define the question or goal behind the analysis: what are you trying to discover?.Here’s an introduction to the data analytics process: