What is Data Analytics?
Data analytic is the process of examining your data to discover trends, draw
conclusions, and make data-driven decisions. It involves various techniques and
tools to process & transform data into valuable insights. Data analytic can be
broadly categorized into four types: Descriptive, Diagnostic, Predictive, and
Prescriptive. Here¾s a breakdown of each type:
1. Descriptive Analytics
This type focuses on summarizing and describing past data to understand what happened. It answers the question: <What happened?= Eg:
Calculating the average sales for a month, generating report on website traffic, creating visualizations.
Collect Raw Data
Process & Clean Data
Summarize Information
Answer: What Happened?
2. Diagnostic Analytics
This type dives deeper into the reasons behind past events. It aims to identify the root causes of specific outcomes to help explain why it
happened. Eg: Determining why sales declined by analyzing customer feedback, identifying factors behind customer churn.
Event Analysis
Answer Why
Data Review
Root Cause
3. Predictive Analytics
This type uses historical data to forecast future trends and outcomes. It answers the question: <What will likely happen?= Eg: Predicting
customer churn based on their behaviour, forecasting future sales based on historical sales data & market trends.
Historical Data
Data Processing
Predictive Modeling
Future Forecasts
4. Prescriptive Analytics
This type focuses on recommending actions to take to achieve desired outcomes. It builds upon predictive analytics by suggesting the best
course of action. It answers the question: <How can we make it happen?= Eg: Recommending optimal pricing strategy based on predicted
demand.
Recommended
Data Analysis Modeling Simulation Optimization
Actions
Advantages of Data Analytics
Data analytics offers numerous advantages across business functions. Here are some key benefits:
Improved Decision-Making Improved Operational Efficiency
Provides real-time & historical insights. Identifies bottlenecks, costs, and inefficiencies.
Enables fact-driven decision-making. Optimizes resource allocation and supply chain management.
Helps predict outcomes to anticipate key issues.
Enhanced Customer Understanding Competitive Advantage
Provides insight into customer behaviors, preferences and Helps businesses spot market trends and opportunities early.
trends. Enables faster adaption to changing market conditions.
Enables personalized marketing and customer service
improvements.
Risk Management Product & Service Innovation
Supports proactive strategies to mitigate financial & operational Allows for A/B testing and customer feedback integration into
risks. development.
Cost Reduction Better Performance Measurement
Pinpoints areas of unnecessary spend. Establishes Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and tracks
Enhances budget forecasting and financial planning. progress.
Offers dashboards and reports for continuous monitoring.
Data View and Variable View in
SPSS
In SPSS, Data View is where you see the actual data with rows representing cases
and columns representing variables. Variable View is where you define & modify
the properties of each variable such as its name, type & labels.
Data View
Displays the dataset¾s raw data in a spreadsheet format. Each row represents a
case (e.g., a survey respondent or a specific observation). Each column
represents a variable (e.g., age, gender, income).
Variable View
Allows you to define the characteristics of each variable in your dataset. Provides
options to specify:
Variable Name: The name used to refer to variables in analysis.
Variable Type (e.g., Numeric, String, Date).
Width: No. of characters for string variables.
Decimals: No. of decimal places for numeric variables.
Label: A descriptive label for variable.
Values: Labels for different numeric codes (e.g., 1 = male, 2 = female).
Columns: The width of columns in Data View.
Align: How the data is aligned in the column.
Measure: The measurement level of the variable (Nominal, Ordinal, Scale).
Role: Specifies the role of the variable in analyses (Input, Target, Both, None).
Introduction to SPSS
SPSS is a powerful tool for data analysis, offering a wide range of statistical
procedures, data management capabilities, and visualization options. It allows
users to:
Import & manage data.
Perform descriptive & inferential statistics.
Create visualizations.
Automate analysis with syntax.
