Analytics for the Internet of Things (IoT)

Look at your data - au naturel

The very first thing you should always do with unfamiliar data is to look at a good sample of it in raw form. This is a very important and an often overlooked step, even by experienced analysts. Your first instinct will be to run averages and standard deviations to look for trends. Resist the impulse.

You want to view the file first without any formatting or interpretations, so you need to use a software tool that does not apply any formats to it. If you have a Windows laptop, Notepad is a good one to use as long as the file is not too large. Excel is not good to use for this, as it applies its own formatting and interpretations to text files, such as .csv.

On a Mac or a Linux machine, use a command-line text ...