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Introduction
1.1 What Is Analytics?
Analytics is the reduction of data to understandable findings. This is an inten-
tionally broad definition; the data aren’t required to be numerical, computers
and code aren’t necessa rily involved, and the subject o f the data isn’t restricted
to a ny particular fields.
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A team from IBM (Lustig et al. 2010) proposed a classification scheme for
types of analytics that has been widely ado pted and popularized; this scheme
is useful when explaining to people without technical ex pertise what topics
are included in analytics. The three categories are:
• Descr iptive ana lytics,
• P redictive analytics, and
• P rescriptive