Data analysis is a process of inspecting, cleansing, transforming, and modeling data with the goal of
discovering useful information, informing conclusions, and supporting decision-making. Data analysis has
multiple facets and approaches, encompassing diverse techniques under a variety of names, and is used
in different business, science, and social science domains. In today's business world, data analysis plays a
role in making decisions more scientific and helping businesses operate more effectively.[1]
Data mining is a particular data analysis technique that focuses on statistical modeling and knowledge
discovery for predictive rather than purely descriptive purposes, while business intelligence covers data
analysis that relies heavily on aggregation, focusing mainly on business information.[2] In statistical
applications, data analysis can be divided into descriptive statistics, exploratory data analysis (EDA), and
confirmatory data analysis (CDA). EDA focuses on discovering new features in the data while CDA focuses
on confirming or falsifying existing hypotheses. Predictive analytics focuses on the application of
statistical models for predictive forecasting or classification, while text analytics applies statistical,
linguistic, and structural techniques to extract and classify information from textual sources, a species of
unstructured data. All of the above are varieties of data analysis.
Data integration is a precursor to data analysis, and data analysis is closely linked to data visualization
and data dissemination.
