DEV Community

Cover image for What is data analytics? Types , careers and importance.
Beryl Chebet
Beryl Chebet

Posted on

What is data analytics? Types , careers and importance.

Data analytics is the process of cleaning data to get information. it involves collecting and transferring valuable information from useless data and analyzing it to generate numerical data and patterns that can lead to profitable improvement. Therefore, a data analyst is someone who gets information from raw data and can use the information to determine trends, provide solutions and describe problems and their possible solutions.
Data analytics is important in

  1. Supporting decision making – To deliver critical insights on whether a business is moving in the right direction, data analytics in business is effective in determining market trends and explaining the key drivers of the success of a product or service versus another which may not be faring as well.
  2. Driving productivity, efficiency, and revenue growth- The results from analyzing data sets is going to tell an organization where they can optimize, which processes can be optimized or automated, which processes they can get better efficiencies out of and which processes are unproductive and thus can have resources dedicated away.
  3. Determining more effective marketing strategies- Businesses can use data analytics to better understand their client base in terms of customer trends and behaviors. This information can be used focus on more effective pitching of products and services. The different types of data analysis are Predictive analysis, prescriptive analysis, descriptive analysis and diagnostic analysis.

•Descriptive analysis: describes what happened based on past events.
•Diagnostic analysis: aims to understand what happened and why it happened,
•Predictive analysis: forecasting on what will happen in the future.
•Prescriptive analysis: states what action should be done to achieve a goal.

Various roles that require knowledge of data analytics, some of these roles are business intelligence analyst, data analyst, data scientist, data engineer, quantitative analyst and marketing analyst. Data analysis is providing skills that are very important to various fields, some of these fields are healthcare, cybersecurity, businesses and marketing. Transportation. These are just but a few fields where data analytics is applied, data analytics does not limit you to a particular field. With a relevant set of technical skills, you can grow into any field of interest.

Top comments (0)