The Analytics Lifecycle Toolkit

CHAPTER 7Data Sensemaking

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.

Marcel Proust

PROCESS OVERVIEW

A well-formed question is the foundation for all analytics. The previous chapter on problem framing explained the need for articulating a good question and conveying a clear problem statement.

Data Exploration

During problem framing, preliminary data exploration is typically performed in support of data gathering in order to do the following:

• Determine how big the problem is.
• Support your root-cause analysis and hypothesis generation activities.
• Position the business case value for doing the project in the first place.

You don't always know whether a project will be approved, so digging too deep during problem framing isn't always warranted. Further, you may have considered a number of hypotheses—some of which could not be tested with a formal study (i.e., project or product). Once your problem is captured, your question clearly articulated, your hypotheses generated, and your study design conceptualized, you are ready to assess which data assets will be most useful for your work.

TIP

Be careful of the temptation to stop your analytic efforts with a reasonable hypothesis in hand. There is a big difference between hypothesis generation and hypothesis testing. While your theory may be viable, you need to test it before claiming ...