At the end of this week, the student is expected to:

a. Define key concepts involved in data analytics including data, data analysis, and data
ecosystem
b. Discuss the use of data in everyday life decisions
c. Identify the key features of the learning environment and their uses
d. Describe principles and practices that will help to increase one's chances of success in this
certificate
e. Explain the use of data in organizational decision-making

Every day, the amount of data out there gets bigger and bigger. So, the ability to interpret it effectively is
more important than ever before. Data analytics is becoming one of the fastest-growing and most
rewarding career choices in the world. In the next decade, the demand for business analytics skills will
probably be higher than the demand for any other career (10.9% vs. 5.2%) (Source: Bureau of Labor
Statistics). All kinds of companies all over the world need qualified data analysts to solve problems and
help them make the best possible business decisions. And right now, fifty-nine percent of companies
have plans to add even more positions requiring data analysis skills (Source: SHRM). By the time you are
done with this program, you will be well-prepared to make smart, strategic, data-driven recommendations
for organizations in all kinds of industries.

Overview
By now, you've started to discover how powerful data can be. Throughout this course, you’ll be asked to
make entries in a learning log. Your log will be a personal space where you can keep track of your thinking
and reflections about the experiences you will have collecting and analyzing data. Reflections may
include what you liked, what you would change, and questions that were raised. By the time you complete
the entry for this activity, you will have a stronger understanding of data analytics.

Everyday data
Before you write an entry in your learning log, think about where and how you use data to make decisions.
You will create a list of at least five questions that you might use data to answer. Here are a few examples
to inspire you:

• What’s the best time to go to the gym?

• How does the length of your commute to work vary by day of the week?
• How many cups of coffee do you drink each day?
• What flavor of ice cream do customers buy?
• How many hours of sleep do you get each day?

Then, you will select one of the five questions from your list to explore further and write down the types
of data you might collect in order to make a decision. That’s data analysis in action!

Reflection
After you consider how you use data analysis in your own life, take a moment to reflect on what you
discovered. Reflections may include what you liked, what you would change, and questions that were
raised. In your new learning log entry, you will write 2-3 sentences (60-100 words) in response to each
question.

"Data! Data! Data! I can't make bricks without clay." This line was said by Sherlock Holmes, the famous
detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. What Doyle meant was that Holmes couldn't draw any
conclusions, which would be the bricks he mentioned without data, or the clay.

This is your introduction to the wonderful world of data analytics. Since data analytics is the science of
data, you'll use this course to begin to learn all about data. Data is basically a collection of facts or
information. This collection can include numbers, pictures, videos, words, measurements, observations,
and more. Once you have data, analytics puts it to work through analysis. Data analysis is the collection,
transformation, and organization of data in order to draw conclusions, make predictions, and drive
informed decision-making. And it doesn't stop there. Data evolves over time which means this analysis
or analytics, as we call it, can give us new information throughout data's entire life cycle. Data is
everywhere.

All of that data is transforming the world around us. The publication The Economist recently called data
the world's most valuable resource. It's easy to see why data analysts are so valued by their
organizations. What exactly does a data analyst do? Put simply, a data analyst is someone who collects,
transforms, and organizes data in order to help make informed decisions. In this first course, you'll learn
more about each phase of the data analysis process. Ask, prepare, process, analyze, share, and act.

Businesses need a way to control all that data so they can use it to improve processes, identify
opportunities and trends, launch new products, serve customers, and make thoughtful decisions. For
businesses to be on top of the competition, they need to be on top of their data. That's why these
companies hire data analysts to control the waves of data they collect every day, makes sense of it, and
then draw conclusions or make predictions. This is the process of turning data into insights, and its how
analysts help businesses put all their data to good use. This is actually a good way to think about analysis:
turning data into insights. Those insights are shared with others, decisions are made, and businesses
take action.

Data analytics can help organizations completely rethink something they do or point them in a totally
new direction. For example, maybe data leads them to a new product or unique service, or maybe it helps
them find a new way to deliver an incredible customer experience. It's these kinds of aha! moments that
can help businesses reach another level, and that makes data analysts vital to any business.

Case Study: New Data Perspectives

Here is a real-life example of how one group of data analysts used the six steps of the data analysis
process to improve their workplace and its business processes. Their story involves something called
people analytics — also known as human resources analytics or workforce analytics. People analytics is
the practice of collecting and analyzing data on the people who make up a company’s workforce in order
to gain insights to improve how the company operates.

An organization was experiencing a high turnover rate among new hires. Many employees left the
company before the end of their first year on the job. The analysts used the data analysis process to
answer the following question: how can the organization improve the retention rate for new employees?

Here is a breakdown of what this team did, step by step.

First up, the analysts needed to define what the project would look like and what would qualify as a
successful result. So, to determine these things, they asked effective questions and collaborated with
leaders and managers who were interested in the outcome of their people analysis. These were the kinds
of questions they asked:

• What do you think new employees need to learn to be successful in their first year on the job?
• Have you gathered data from new employees before? If so, may we have access to the historical
data?
• Do you believe managers with higher retention rates offer new employees something extra or
unique?
• What do you suspect is a leading cause of dissatisfaction among new employees?
• By what percentage would you like employee retention to increase in the next fiscal year?

It all started with solid preparation. The group built a timeline of three months and decided how they
wanted to relay their progress to interested parties. Also, during this step, the analysts identified what
data they needed to achieve the successful result they identified in the previous step - in this case, the
analysts chose to gather the data from an online survey of new employees. These were the things they
did to prepare:

• They developed specific questions to ask about employee satisfaction with different business
processes, such as hiring and onboarding, and their overall compensation.
• They established rules for who would have access to the data collected - in this case, anyone
outside the group wouldn't have access to the raw data, but could view summarized or
aggregated data. For example, an individual's compensation wouldn't be available, but salary
ranges for groups of individuals would be viewable.
• They finalized what specific information would be gathered, and how best to present the data
visually. The analysts brainstormed possible project- and data-related issues and how to avoid
them.
The group sent the survey out. Great analysts know how to respect both their data and the people who
provide it. Since employees provided the data, it was important to make sure all employees gave their
consent to participate. The data analysts also made sure employees understood how their data would
be collected, stored, managed, and protected. Collecting and using data ethically is one of the
responsibilities of data analysts. In order to maintain confidentiality and protect and store the data
effectively, these were the steps they took:

• They restricted access to the data to a limited number of analysts.

• They cleaned the data to make sure it was complete, correct, and relevant. Certain data was
aggregated and summarized without revealing individual responses.
• They uploaded raw data to an internal data warehouse for an additional layer of security.

Then, the analysts did what they do best: analyze! From the completed surveys, the data analysts
discovered that an employee’s experience with certain processes was a key indicator of overall job
satisfaction. These were their findings:

• Employees who experienced a long and complicated hiring process were most likely to leave the
company.
• Employees who experienced an efficient and transparent evaluation and feedback process were
most likely to remain with the company.

The group knew it was important to document exactly what they found in the analysis, no matter what
the results. To do otherwise would diminish trust in the survey process and reduce their ability to collect
truthful data from employees in the future.

Just as they made sure the data was carefully protected, the analysts were also careful sharing the
report. This is how they shared their findings:
 • They shared the report with managers who met or exceeded the minimum number of direct
reports with submitted responses to the survey.
• They presented the results to the managers to make sure they had the full picture.
• They asked the managers to personally deliver the results to their teams.

This process gave managers an opportunity to communicate the results with the right context. As a
result, they could have productive team conversations about next steps to improve employee
engagement.

The last stage of the process for the team of analysts was to work with leaders within their company and
decide how best to implement changes and take actions based on the findings. These were their
recommendations:

• Standardize the hiring and evaluation process for employees based on the most efficient and
transparent practices.
• Conduct the same survey annually and compare results with those from the previous year.

A year later, the same survey was distributed to employees. Analysts anticipated that a comparison
between the two sets of results would indicate that the action plan worked. Turns out, the changes
improved the retention rate for new employees and the actions taken by leaders were successful!

Overview
Earlier you learned about how data analysts at one organization used data to improve employee
retention. Now, you’ll complete an entry in your learning log to track your thinking and reflections about
those data analysts' process and how they approached this problem. By the time you complete this
activity, you will have a stronger understanding of how the six phases of the data analysis process can
be used to break down tasks and tackle big questions. This will help you apply these steps to future
analysis tasks and start tackling big questions yourself.
Review the six phases of data analysis
Before you write your entry in your learning log, reflect on the case study from earlier. The data analysts
wanted to use data to improve employee retention. In order to do that, they had to break this larger project
into manageable tasks. The analysts organized those tasks and activities around the six phases of the
data analysis process:

Access your learning log

Open our Google Classroom and check the learning log 2.

What is Data Ecosystem?

Data ecosystems are made up of various elements that interact with one another in order to produce,
manage, store, organize, analyze, and share data. These elements include hardware and software tools,
and the people who use them.

Data can also be found in something called the cloud. The cloud is a place to keep data online, rather
than on a computer hard drive. So instead of storing data somewhere inside your organization's network,
that data is accessed over the internet. The cloud plays a big part in the data ecosystem, and as a data
analyst, it's your job to harness the power of that data ecosystem, find the right information, and provide
the team with analysis that helps them make smart decisions.

Data Scientists VS. Data Analysts

Data scientists create new questions using data, while analysts find answers to existing questions by
creating insights from data sources.

How data informs better decisions?

One of the most powerful ways you can put data to work is with data-driven decision-making. Data-driven
decision-making is defined as using facts to guide business strategy.

The first step in data-driven decision-making is figuring out the business need. Usually, this is a problem
that needs to be solved. For example, a problem could be a new company needing to establish better
brand recognition, so it can compete with bigger, more well-known competitors. Or maybe an
organization wants to improve a product and needs to figure out how to source parts from a more
sustainable or ethically responsible supplier. Or, it could be a business trying to solve the problem of
unhappy employees, low levels of engagement, satisfaction and retention.

Data and gut instinct

There are other factors that influence the decision-making process. You may have read mysteries where
the detective used their gut instinct, and followed a hunch that helped them solve the case. Gut instinct
is an intuitive understanding of something with little or no explanation. This
isn’t always something conscious; we often pick up on signals without even
realizing. You just have a “feeling” it’s right.

Why gut instinct can be a problem?

At the heart of data-driven decision making is data. Therefore, it's essential
that data analysts focus on the data to ensure they make informed decisions.
If you ignore data by preferring to make decisions based on your own
experience, your decisions may be biased. But even worse, decisions based
on gut instinct without any data to back them up can cause mistakes.

The more you understand the data related to a project, the easier it will be to figure out what is required.
These efforts will also help you identify errors and gaps in your data so you can communicate your
findings more effectively. Sometimes past experience helps you make a connection that no one else
would notice.

1. Coursera. Foundations: Data, Data, Everywhere (Google Data Analytics). Retrieved from:
https://www.coursera.org/learn/foundations-data

Prepared by:

PATRICK V. MOLE, MIT

Faculty, College Information
and Technology Education