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Udacity Data Analysis

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1K views

Udacity Data Analysis

Uploaded by

mikitesfa777
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Please note that copying and displaying any of the Udacity.

com’s content
without our authorization is considered a copyright violation and a serious
offence. Similarly, using Udacity’s trademark and goodwill without our
authorization constitutes trademark violation, which is also an offence.

Committing this offence or taking part in any other form of it will result in
potential termination of the account and disqualification from the program.
Data is defined as distinct pieces of information and it can come in many
forms. From numbers in a spreadsheet, text to video and databases, to
images and audio recordings, utilizing data in its different forms is the new
way of the world.

Data is used to understand and improve nearly every facet of our lives. So, no
matter what field you are in, you can utilize data to make better decisions and
accomplish your goals.
We will start this lesson with an overview of data types and the most common
statistics used when analyzing data.

We'll discuss :

 Measures of center and spread.


 Common shapes that data takes on and how to handle outliers
 How to use spreadsheets to handle these calculations
 How to build visuals to communicate calculations
Continuous vs. Discrete
We can think of quantitative data as being either continuous or discrete.

Continuous data can be split into smaller and smaller units, and still a smaller
unit exists. An example of this is the age of the dog - we can measure the
units of the age in years, months, days, hours, seconds, but there are still
smaller units that could be associated with the age.

Discrete data only takes on countable values. The number of dogs we


interact with is an example of a discrete data type.
In the next lessons, you will learn how to use statistics to describe quantitative
data. You'll gain insight into the process of how data is collected and how to
answer questions using your data. Throughout this lesson, you will learn to be
critical of the analysis that happens "under the hood" and understand what the
numbers actually mean.

As an example of the analysis we do here at Udacity, we look at how long


students take to complete one of our courses or programs. We try to provide
an estimate of the number of hours or months that students will spend. One
way to start is to report the average amount of time it takes to complete a
course. But that doesn't tell the whole story because there will be differences
in time spent depending on what students knew before beginning the course.

The shortest time might be just a few weeks and the longest might be a
couple of years. What proportion of students finishes within two months and
what proportion takes longer than eight months?

Using a variety of measures, like measures of center, give you an idea of the
average student. Measures of spread, give you an idea of how students
differ. Visuals provide a more complete picture of how long it takes any
student to complete a course or program.
Analyzing Quantitative Data
Four Aspects for Quantitative Data
There are four main aspects to analyzing Quantitative data.

1. Measures of Center
2. Measures of Spread
3. The Shape of the data.
4. Outliers

Analyzing Categorical Data


Though not discussed in the video, analyzing categorical data has fewer parts
to consider. Categorical data is analyzed usually by looking at the counts or
proportion of individuals that fall into each group. For example, if we were
looking at the breeds of the dogs, we would care about how many dogs are of
each breed, or what proportion of dogs are of each breed type.

Measures of Center
There are three measures of center:

1. Mean
2. Median
3. Mode

The Mean
In this video, we focused on the calculation of the mean. The mean is often
called the average or the expected value in mathematics. We calculate the
mean by adding all of our values together and dividing by the number of
values in our dataset.

The remaining measures of the median and mode will be discussed in detail
in the upcoming quizzes and videos.

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