'Data analysis' is a process of gathering, modeling, and transforming 'data'
with the goal of highlighting useful information, suggesting conclusions, and
supporting decision making. Data analysis has multiple facets and approaches,
encompassing diverse techniques under a variety of names, in different business,
science, and social science domains. Data mining is a particular data analysis technique that focuses on modeling and
knowledge discovery for predictive rather than purely descriptive purposes.
Business intelligence covers data analysis that relies heavily on aggregation,
focusing on business information. In statistical applications, some people
divide data analysis into descriptive statistics, exploratory data analysis, and
confirmatory data analysis. EDA focuses on discovering new features in the data
and CDA on confirming or falsifying existing hypotheses. Predictive analytics
focuses on application of statistical or structural models for predictive
forecasting or classification, while text analytics applies statistical,
linguistic, and structural techniques to extract and classify information from
textual sources, a species of unstructured data. All are varieties of data
analysis. Data integration is a precursor to data analysis, and data analysis is closely
linked to data visualization and data dissemination. The term data analysis is
sometimes used as a synonym for data modeling, which is unrelated to the subject
of this article.
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