9. If You Don’t Know What You Want, You Just May Find It: Ad Hoc Analysis
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
—J. R. R. Tolkien [1]
Up to this point in our discussions, we’ve looked at how to find data, where to look for it, how to clean it, and now how to process it. Much of what we have discussed thus far involves the process of building a model (or a definition) of what we want to look for and then running an analysis to see if our model fits or provides relevant results. If the data seems to fit the model, we take the output, calling it information, and build our insights or knowledge from there. If the data doesn’t fit our model, perhaps we modify the model and try again, or go look for different sources of data that may be more relevant ...
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