Let’s walk through a real-world example of a data analysis project.
When I was first exploring different career paths in data science, I had a lot of questions about what the actual day-to-day work would look like for a data professional. But now that I have spent the last few years working as a data analyst at a large telecommunications company, I finally have the answers to those questions. So, I want to share in this article the details about the kinds of projects I work on so that anyone else asking the same questions can get an insider look into this career path.
The data analyst workflow always begins and ends with a business question. What would we like to know and how can data help us find out the answer? The data analyst’s job is to gather, synthesize, and visualize all the data relevant to answering that business question.
Ideally, such an inquiry will not assume or expect certain results, but in the real-world, underlying every business question are usually some assumptions about what the data will say. So, it’s important to always ask clarifying questions like: What is the aim of this analysis? What is the context? And are there any underlying assumptions?