Making Data Useful
When working with data, a significant chunk of time, around 80-90 percent, is devoted to gathering and preparing it for analysis, comparison, and practical use.
Similarly, if you ask athletes about their daily routines, they will tell you that most of their time is spent on preparations. They go through training, recovery, analysis, and prepare themselves for that crucial moment when the sum of their hard work hopefully will pay off in a good performance.
Working with data is not much different. Just like athletes invest a lot of effort in training and preparations, preparing and utilising data also requires essential groundwork.
In this chapter, we will explore the key aspects of this groundwork.
Insight
Why we work “backwards” with data
Remember the data life cycle? In these chapters we are essentially following the life cycle chronologically: from collection via processing toward creating value.
In reality however, when we’re in a situation where we want to use data to discover or achieve something, we actually work “backwards”. We begin by setting our goal at the finish line, and then we work our way back to the starting point.
What problems are we going to solve? How can we use data to effectively respond to these tasks and find the most efficient way to achieve our objectives? Step by step we unravel knots and tie up loose ends, weaving it all into a well-structured plan.
This chapter will focus on how we can appropriately prepare and set up our data.
Chapter 4
What you will learn
In this section, we’ll delve into concepts like data quality, and work through exercises to help understand how to prepare data for use. We’ll also become more familiar with databases.
This phase is in the midst of the life cycle, and while it may not seem to hold a tangible end result in itself, it’s still important. Think of it as the beautiful serve before the decisive smash!