1.

Data collection: Collecting data from various sources such as sales reports, customer
surveys, social media, etc.
2. Data preparation: Cleaning and organizing the data so it can be analyzed.
3. Exploratory data analysis: Analyzing the data to find trends, patterns, and
relationships.
4. Data visualization: Creating graphs and charts to visualize the data and make it easy
to understand

Descriptive analytics is all about to working with historical data. Through descriptive analytics, we
are trying to find out the past trends or insights through statistical tools. There are many use cases
for descriptive analytics which are being used for all industries to take right decision based on the
historical occurrence.

There are few tests being performed while doing descriptive analytics.

Mean– To find out the mean or average. In case of Excel, AVERGAE function should be used. In case
of R, use mean() function to get mean of a data set.

Median– Median is useful instead of average if the data set contain extreme values. Also, Mean and
Median should be deferent. In such cases, median should be considered which is not affected by the
extreme values. To find out the median. In case of Excel, MEDIAN

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function should be used. Use median() function in R to find out median.

Maximum– To find out the maximum value from data set. In case of Excel, MAX function should be
used. Max() function is being used to get the maximum value in R.

Minimum– To find out the minimum value from data set. In case of Excel, MIN function should be
used. In case of R min() function is being used to get minimum value.

Standard Deviation– Standard Deviation is to find out the deviation of the data points in a data set.
In case of Excel, STDEV function should be used. Sometimes, variance can be performed instead of
standard deviation. The main difference between standard deviation and variance is standard
deviation is the square root of variance. In excel, VAR function is being used to check the variance of
data.
Range– Range is to find out the difference between maximum and minimum value in data.

1st, 2nd and 3rd Quartile– Quartile tool is to break the data into four parts for better understanding
of the data. In case of Excel, QUARTILE function should be used. Quartile data can be found in R by
using summary() function.

Outlier- Outlier finding and removing it from data set is a crucial part to prepare the data for further
analysis in terms of predictive analysis. Outlier can be found through quartile calculation and
simplest way is to plot the data through boxplot.

Skewness and Kurtosis- Skewness and Kurtosis is on of the important part of data to be checked
while performing descriptive analytics. If data is being skewed, the necessary action can be taken in
terms of cleaning the data by the data analyst to perform any further analysis. In case of excel, SKEW
and KURT functions are being used to check skewness and kurtosis. For skewness and kurtosis in R,
moments library is required. Moreover, to get skewness and kurtosis, skewness and kurtosis
functions are being used. Also, hist() function is useful to visualize histogram of a data set.

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In R summary() function is useful to get basic descriptive statistics results.

What is an example of Descriptive Analytics?

Here is the dummy data set of employee salaries as an example to perform descriptive analytics.

Here is the dummy data set of employee salaries as an example to perform descriptive
analytics.

Salary Data Descriptive Analytics

89,678 Mean 78,735

66,703 Median 76,634

74,109 Max 141,392

141,392 Standard Deviation 24,706

54,433 Range 86,959

80,553 Quartile 1 65,847

56,081 Quartile 2 76,634

79,683 Quartile 3 80,336

65,561

Example of Descriptive Analytics

Descriptive analytics with data visualization?

There are multiple factors which are being tested while performing descriptive analytics as discussed
before. So, Boxplot is such data visualization solution which helps to find out most of the factors like
maximum, minimum, average, median, spread of data, skewness of the data.

Here is the example:

Also, Bell curve is being used to check the skewness and kurtosis of the data which are part of
descriptive analytics. bell curve is basically formed with the help of probability distribution method
and to check the distribution of a data set. Bell curve works better in case of normal distribution of a
data set. It is also called density curve or 68-95-99 as it is showing the data based on 1/2/3 standard
deviation.

Histogram is another graphical method to check the distribution of a data set, in other words,
frequency distribution. Histogram also talks about skewness and of the data. All the analytics or
statistical tools have the option to create histogram as data visualization. In excel, histogram chart
insert option is readily available in insert chart option. In R and Python, it is part of data visualization
packages.

The trendline is helpful if it is time series data to check the trend. Though it is all about historical
data, past business trend and seasonal impact on business can be identified. Also, it is helpful for ROI
analysis, price changes, external and internal factors. If you are using excel to check the historical
trend of data, simply create scatterplot and add trendline into it. It will give the clear visibility on the
trend. Additionally, regression equation can be added into it which will add more value.

So, we have discussed that what is descriptive analytics and how to perform the same. Also, nine
points of descriptive analytics explained with example to make the concept clear. Apart from that,
many times correlation parameter also checked to understand the relationship among two or more
variables with the help of historical data.