Translating Statistics to Make Decisions: A Guide for the Non-Statistician

© Victoria Cox 2017

Victoria Cox, Translating Statistics to Make Decisions , 10.1007/978-1-4842-2256-0_3

3. Exploratory Data Analysis

What Data Do I Have?

Victoria Cox¹ 

(1)Dstl, Salisbury, UK

The first thing to do with any data set is to get to know it. This is done not only to familiarize yourself with all the data you have collected, but also to reduce the workload during analysis. The initial data investigation has been termed exploratory data analysis or EDA and it primarily focuses on visually inspecting the data. The main aim of EDA is to understand what data you have, what possible trends there are, and therefore which statistical tests will be appropriate to use.

Figure 3-1 shows the suggested process to follow when conducting EDA.

Figure 3-1. ...