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Process and Summarize Data

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6 views

Process and Summarize Data

Uploaded by

Constant HOUEHA
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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[Supplemental] Process and summarize

data
As a data analyst, you’re responsible for making data easier to understand. When data is first
collected, it’s usually in a raw, unprocessed form. Summarizing data enables analysts to extract
key information from large amounts of data, and gain insights about a business, such as overall
performance of a team, trends in revenue, or relationships between marketing and product
sales.

In this reading, you’ll learn more about how data analysts can summarize key information found
in large data sets.

Make raw data easier to understand


Raw data allows you to observe information in its original form, but by organizing data and
analyzing it, you can gain deeper insights. One way that data analysts make raw data easier to
understand is by calculating descriptive statistics that represent the data. Descriptive statistics
are simpler, more easily interpreted values that summarize important values or trends found in
large data sets. Data analysts can use descriptive statistics to monitor key performance
indicators or business metrics, such as mean time spent on customer service calls, or the
range of revenue per customer.

Some common descriptive statistics that data analysts use are:

● Range
● Mean
● Median
● Mode

Range

Range is a statistic that measures the difference between the maximum and minimum values
in a data set. The range of a data set is calculated by subtracting the minimum value from the
maximum value. Data analysts can calculate the range to help measure how spread out the
values in a data set are. For example, a data analyst exploring customer service data may want
to find the range for the amount of time customer service agents spend with customers. The
analyst can use the range to help measure variability in the length of customer service calls.

1
Mean

A mean is a statistic that measures the central tendency or average value in a data set. Data
analysts calculate the mean by finding the sum of all the values in a data set, then dividing it by
the total number of data points. Means are a reliable measure of central tendency when the
values in a data set are evenly spread out across the range, or there aren’t any outliers. For
example, a data analyst exploring how well different categories of products have sold over
multiple years could find the mean revenue from each category. That way, they can quickly
identify which products consistently produce the most revenue.

Median

Another measure of central tendency in a data set is the median. The median is the middle
value within a data set, and is determined by ordering the values from least to greatest to find
the middle value. This value has an equal number of values that are both greater and less than
it. If there’s an even number of values in a data set, the two values in the middle are added
together and divided by two to determine the median. Medians are useful when a data set
includes outliers that are much higher or lower than most other data, because the median is
less influenced by the range of the data. For example, a data analyst exploring sales data may
want to determine a central tendency for prices of items sold at a store. The analyst could find
the mean price, but if there are a few really high or low priced items sold, it could skew the
mean value. Instead, the analyst could avoid the influence from outliers by finding the median
price of items sold at the store.

Mode

Similar to mean and median, modes also measure the central tendency of a data set. Modes
are simply the most frequent or common value that occurs in a data set. Data analysts may use
modes to help predict future outcomes. For example, a data analyst exploring customer
feedback may want to determine the mode of customer satisfaction ratings in order to identify
the most frequent satisfaction score the organization receives.

Key takeaways
Data analysts work with raw data to make it easier to understand and analyze the data for
deeper insights. Using data to calculate descriptive statistics is an important step in gaining a
deeper understanding of the data. Descriptive statistics, like range, mean, median, and mode,
are useful in summarizing large data sets. By effectively summarizing large data sets, data
analysts can more effectively communicate important information to stakeholders to help
them make data-driven business decisions.

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