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Be Data Analytical
Book

Be Data Analytical

How to Use Analytics to Turn Data into Value

Kogan Page, 2023 more...

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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Comprehensive
  • Analytical
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

Perhaps you have the skills to spot problems at your organization, but you don’t know why they’re happening or how to change them. In this useful guide to data analytics, you’ll learn the basics of fostering an iterative data-driven culture at your business, and how to take your analytics to the next level by building descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive capacities. Data expert Jordan Morrow guides leaders to transform their companies by elevating data literacy levels and supporting an ethos of curiosity and experimentation.

Summary

Human intuition and data analytics should work together to inform decision making.

People tend to overcomplicate what being “data-driven” truly means. Data-driven activities are those that leverage data and analytics to assist in making decisions. Some may incorrectly assume that data-driven decisions means cutting humans out of the process. But you’d be wrong to try to replace the human part of decision-making processes entirely with mechanical data analysis, as your intuition can help guide you in making choices that best serve you and your organization. Ultimately, both human and data elements should function together to help individuals and entities make better data-informed decisions.

Improve your data-driven decision capabilities by progressing through four levels of analytics:

  1. Descriptive analytics — This refers to the use of data to simply describe a problem. When making decisions, descriptive analytics can help you identify your starting point.
  2. Diagnostic data analytics — In this stage, you identify the root causes of the problem.
  3. Predictive data analytics...

About the Author

Jordan Morrow is the author of Be Data Literate and Be Data Driven, as well as the vice president and head of data and analytics at BrainStorm. He previously served as the Data Literacy Project’s advisory board chair.