Data generally tells a story. However, this is not obvious just from looking at the data. To understand data, we need to be able to ask certain questions and get answers from the data. Asking the right questions in itself requires a great deal of domain knowledge and experience. Once the questions are framed, getting the answers from the data is the next crucial task. Data exploration is an iterative journey because getting answers to questions generally leads to more questions, and then one has to answer these new questions using data.
We will look at the following two important techniques for understanding and exploring data:
- Statistical methods: Looking at the properties of data at an aggregate level
- Visual methods: Looking at the properties of data using visual methods
In fact, in many real scenarios, both of these methods are used in conjunction with...