Slides used for a presentation to introduce the field of business analytics. Covers what BA is, how it is a part of business intelligence, and what areas make up BA.

1. Introduction to Analytics
Alex Meadows
October 21, 2015

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Contents
● What is Analytics?
● Why Care?
● The Analytics Landscape
● Components of Analytics

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What is Analytics?
● The science (and art!) of applying statistical techniques to data sets to obtain
actionable information
● Part of Business Intelligence
● Multidimensional discipline
– Data Analysis
● Data Modeling
● Data Quality
● Data Transformation
– Data Visualization
– Math/Statistics
– Machine Learning
● Within the past five years it has become more accessible and easier to use
in practice
● Usually a latter-stage evolution of business decision making

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What Is Analytics?
● Obtain “good” data
● Analyze
● Turn into a human readable story
Image Source: http://www.dataincolour.com/about

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Why Care?
● Health Care
– Predict how long a patient will stay as soon as they are admitted
– Predict what a patient has based on symptoms and past medical history
● Manufacturing
– Predict when a machine will need maintenance before it breaks down
– Determine better production processes to reduce waste
● Education
– Determine what educational techniques provide desired results
– Predict students who need tutoring based on the first few weeks of
attendance

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Overlapping Skills
Source: Back In Business, Klimberg, Miori (www.informs.org)

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Analytics Components – Data Modeling
● Providing structure to data based on metadata
● Relational Database Normalization – (reduction of duplication)
– Single source
● Data Warehousing
– Integration of many sources
– Provides cleansed data for reporting/dashboards, analysis, and analytics
● Ontological – metadata in plain language
– Triple stores (subject, predicate, object)
– Integration of one or many sources

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Analytics Components – Data Quality
● Measuring data to determine if it is fit for purpose
● Spot the issues:
First Name Last Name Birth Date
1Tom Smith 01/01/89
2Barbara Jone 04/12/43
3Thomas Smith 01/01/1989
4Jessica Martin 03/19/2084

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Analytics Components – Data Transformation
● Transforming the data to match business requirements and correct data
quality issues
First Name Last Name Birth Date
1Tom Smith 01/01/89
2Barbara Jone 04/12/43
3Thomas Smith 01/01/1989
4Jessica Martin 03/19/2084
Before
First Name Last Name BirthDate
2Barbara Jones 04/12/1943
3Thomas Smith 01/01/1989
4Jessica Martin 03/19/2084
After

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Analytics Components – Data Visualization
● Graphical representation of data
● Useful to tell the story the data provides

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Analytics Components – Data Visualization

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Analytics Components – Statistics
● Deeper analysis of data to determine hidden trends and make predictions
● Feeds other components of Business Intelligence to make smarter decisions
Scatterplot Source: https://teamsite.smu.edu.sg/wiki/stats/Wiki/Linear%20Regression%20in%20STATA.aspx

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Analytics Components – Machine Learning
● Train computers to learn trends and understand data
● Provide action to the analytics

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Analytic Ladder
Source: Competing on Analytics, 2007, Davenport and Harris