Introduction to Analytics

What is analytics?

Analytics is a branch consisting of statistics, machine learning – deep learning algorithms, data extraction, data transformation, visualization to create valuable insight from data to make business decisions.

In short, it is a field that helps to analyze the data and take appropriate decisions for the company.

Majorly small-scale companies don’t use high-level analytics in their day-to-day routine. Most of the work is done on Microsoft Excel – one of the analytical tools – which helps in the evaluation of the data but with certain limitations.

Though Excel is widely used in all firms i.e. small or big; the Inclination of MNCs towards analytics is observed nowadays. Analytics provide a robust mechanism to companies avoiding limited rationality during taking any decisions.

Steps involved in analytical decision making –

• Identifying a problem
• Collecting relevant data
• Transform the data to get appropriate output
• Bifurcate the data as a training and testing dataset
• Building of analytical models
• Implementation of solution

Analytics is majorly divided into three parts

Fig 1.0 – Types of Analytics

Let us try to understand all the three subtypes with an example. Just imagine you are sick and decided to visit a doctor nearby. Firstly, Doctor asks you about your issue and medical history (i.e. Understand your past). Secondly, he makes you understand your illness and its impact in the future (i.e. Do Prediction according to the issue and medical history) and finally, prescribe medicine to avoid any severity which may occur in the future.

Now, let’s compare the above example with the definitions of all the branches of Analytics.

Descriptive Analytics – As the name suggests, it’s a description of the past. It’s the first and the simplest method in analytics where visualization tools and queries are used to understand the past data. Like Doctor evaluates your medical history to understand the issue.

Predictive Analytics – In this type prediction of the probability of occurrence of an event is analyzed. Ex- Impact of illness in future

Prescriptive Analytics – It aims to provide a solution to the problem based on the insights of descriptive and predictive analytics same as the Doctor prescribing medicines to the patients.

Fig 1.1 – Definition of types of Analytics

Summary –Analytics involves gathering information related to the problem, understanding the issue, predicting the future, and taking appropriate decisions.

Analytics is divided into three parts – Descriptive, Predictive and Prescriptive

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