Making Data Useful

How to Add Value as a Data Analyst

The journey to becoming a “real” data analyst

Let’s start with a quick summary of three common misconceptions about analytics:

1. Analytics is statistics. (No.)
2. Analytics is data journalism / marketing / storytelling. (No.)
3. Analytics is decision-making. (No!)

Photo by Alexander Sinn on Unsplash

Misconception #1: Analytics versus statistics

While the tools and equations they use are similar, analysts and statisticians are trained to do very different jobs (learn more here):

Analytics helps you form hypotheses, improving the quality of your questions.

Statistics helps you test hypotheses, improving the quality of your answers.

Misconception #2: Analytics versus journalism/marketing

Analytics is not marketing. The difference is that analytics is about expanding the decision-maker’s perspective while marketing is about narrowing it.

Analytics is about expanding the decision-maker’s perspective…