Analytical Skills for AI and Data Science

Chapter 8. Wrapping Up

In the last few chapters, we covered a lot of material. The analytical toolbox is so diverse that many of these skills may seem disconnected. Let’s finish by zooming out and taking a look at how the pieces fall into place. We’ll also discuss some difficulties we may encounter and finish up with my own view on how things might evolve in the future.

Analytical Skills

In each of the preceding chapters we covered at least one skill. Let’s wrap up by putting everything in perspective and discussing some challenges that remain ahead.

Asking Prescriptive Questions

We first need to learn to ask business questions, and specifically, we need to learn to ask prescriptive business questions. To do so we first have to learn to distinguish this type of analysis from its descriptive and predictive counterparts, and this is something that takes practice.

The good thing is that we are always making decisions, so we can learn and practice this skill by continuously looking at the choices we make, both in the workplace and in life. Our analytical muscle is like any other muscle, and we just need to be constant and conscious about exercising it.

Here’s a summary of the type of questions you can ask if you want to practice and further develop this skillset:

• Why are we making the decision in the first place?

• What is the problem we want to solve?

• Why do we care about this problem, and what are the outcomes we care about?

• What are the actions we can take to attain these ...