What is BA?

• Skills, Tech & Practices for Continuous Iterative Exploration & Investigation to gain insights and drive biz planning

  Data → Insights → Biz Planning

• Types

  • Descriptive
    • Insights about past
    • Summarise raw data to make interpretable
  • Predictive
    • Understand the future
    • Provide actionable insights based on past data
  • Prescriptive
    • Advise possible outcomes
    • Attempt to quantify effect of future decisions on outcomes

Descriptive Biz Analytics

• Randomness, population and samples
• Data - Categorical or Numerical
• Sample - Random, Systematic, Stratified or Clustered
• Stats
  • Central Tendency: Mean, Mode, Median, Midrange, Quartiles
  • Dispersion: Range, Var, Std Dev, Interquart Range, Coeff of Var
  • Shape: Skew or Dispersion
  • Exploratory: Five number summary, box-and-whiskers
• Data Visualisation
  • Presentation of data visually to amplify cognition
  • Tool: Tableau
  • Designing Data Viz Products: Design → Paper&Pencil → Execution
  • Extra
    • Trend Lines, Forecasting, Clustering, What-If Analysis

Predictive Biz Analytics / Machine Learning

• ML is subset of AI
• What Is:
  • Transforming data into knowledge to produce actionable insights
  • Gives computers ability to learn without being explicitly programmed
• ML Lifecycle
  1. Define Goals
     1. Specify Biz Prob
     2. Define unit of analysis, prediction target
     3. Prioritise model criteria