Data Analytics for Beginners
Basic Guide to Master Data Analytics
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Chapter 1: Overview of Data Analytics
Foundations Data Analytics
Getting Started
Mathematics and Analytics
Analysis and Analytics
Communicating Data Insights
Automated Data Services
Chapter 2: The Basics of Data Analytics
Planning a Study
Surveys
Experiments
Gathering Data
Selecting a Useful Sample
Avoiding Bias in a Data Set
Explaining Data
Descriptive analytics
Charts and Graphs
Chapter 3: Measures of Central Tendency
Mean
Median
Mode
Variance
Standard Deviation
Coefficient of Variation
Drawing Conclusions
Chapter 4: Charts and Graphs
Pie Charts
Create a Pie Chart in MS Excel
Bar Graphs
Create a Bar Graph with MS Excel
Customizing the Bar Graph
Time Charts and Line Graphs
Create a Line Graph in MS Excel
Customizing Your Chart
Annual Employee Losses
Adding another Set of Data
Histograms
Create a Histogram with MS Excel
Creating a Histogram
Scatter Plots
Create a Scatter Chart with MS Excel
Spatial Plots and Maps
Chapter 5: Applying Data Analytics to Business and Industry
Business Intelligence (BI)
Data Analytics in Business and Industry
BI and Data Analytics
Chapter 6: Final Thoughts on Data
Conclusion
Introduction
We live in thrilling and innovative times. As business moves to the digital environment, virtually every
action we take produces data. Information is collected from every online interaction. All sorts of devices
gather and store data about who we are, where we are, and what we are doing. Increasingly-massive
warehouses of data are now freely available to the public. Skilled analyses of all this data can help
businesses, governments, and organizations to make better-informed decisions, respond quickly to
changing needs, and to gain deeper insights into our rapidly-changing environment. It is a challenge to
even attempt to make good use of all of the available data. In order to answer specific questions, a
person must decide what data to collect, which methods to use, and how to interpret the results.
Data analytics is a way to make valuable use all types of information. Analytics is used to help
categorize data, identify patterns, and predict results. Data use has become so ubiquitous that it has
become necessary for individuals in every profession to learn how to work with data. Those who
become the most proficient at working with data in useful and creative ways will be the most successful
in the new world of business.
Until recently, data analytics was limited to an exclusive culture of data analysts, who characteristically
presented this topic in complicated and often unintelligible terminology. Fortunately, data analytics is
not as complicated as many believe. It simply consists of using analytical methods and processes to
develop and explain specific and useful information from data. The point of data analytics is to enhance
practices and to support better-informed decisions. This can result in: safer practices within an industry,
greater revenues for a business, higher customer satisfaction, or any other object of focus. This eBook
introduces a wide range of ideas and concepts used for deriving useful information from a set of data,
including data analytics techniques and what can be achieved by using them.
Chapter 1: Overview of Data Analytics
With a little statistical understanding and procedural training, you will be able to use analytical methods
to make data-based insights. Data analytics offers new ways to understand the world. Businesses and
organizations were in the habit of making decisions based on assumptions and hoping for favorable
outcomes. Data analytics gives people the insights that they need to plan for improvements and specific
results. Analytics are generally used for the following purposes:
• To enhance business organizations and increase returns on investment (ROIs).
• To improve the success of sales and marketing campaigns.
• To identify trends and emerging developments.
• To make society more safe.
Foundations Data Analytics
Data analytics requires the use mathematical and statistical procedures. It also requires the skills to work
with certain software applications and a knowledge of the subject area you are working with. Without
knowledge of the subject-matter, analytics is reduced to simple analytics. Due to the increasing demand
for data insights, every field of business has begun to implement data analytics. This has resulted in a
variety of analytic specialties, such as: market analytics, financial analytics, clinical analytics,
geographical analytics, retail analytics, educational analytics, and many other areas of interest.
Getting Started
This chapter explains the major components comprising data analytics, gathering, exploring, and
interpreting data. As a data analyst, you will be collecting and sorting large volumes of raw,
unstructured, and partially-structured data. The amounts of data that you are likely to be working with
can be too large for a normal database system to effective process. A data set that is too large, changes
too quickly, or it does not conform to the structure of standard database designs requires a special
skillset to manage. Data analytics consists of analyzing, predicting, and visualizing data. When data
analysts gather, query, and interpret data, they conduct a process that is quite similar to data engineering.
Although useful insights can be produced from an individual source of data, the blending of several
sources gives context to the data that is necessary to make more informed decisions. As a data analyst,
you can combine multiple datasets that are maintained in a single database. You can also work with
several different databases maintained within a large data warehouse. Data can also be maintained and
managed within a cloud-based platform specially designed for that purpose. However the data is pooled
and wherever it is stored, the analyst must still issue queries on the data and make commands to retrieve
specific information. This is typically done using a specialized database language called Structured
Query Language (SQL).