Database Reference
In-Depth Information
These and other questions are important to any organization that is looking
to get more insight into how it does business. Your business is often faced
with these kinds of questions (and their more complex versions), and having
data sets available to work with will enable folks (soon to be you) to gain the
know-how to use them to provide answers.
“It is a capital mistake
to theorize before
one has data”
S
ir
A
rthur
C
onAn
D
oyle
HoW DATA SETS ArE CrEATED
Data sets get created in a number of ways: automatically by some systems,
by teams of people, and by organizations for publishing. In this chapter you
learn to use a couple of the most common methods, including the following:
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Cut\copy and paste
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Import or export from a computer system
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Manually entering data that comes from offline sources
Any one of these methods might be easier for your particular situation, as you
learn later in the chapter where each of these methods is discussed, but they
are all focused on bringing different pieces of data (customer names, products
purchased, registrations, and/or other important data points) together to paint
a picture of activities and conditions that you want to analyze.
WHy DATA SETS ArE IMPorTANT
The data sets mentioned in the previous section are important since you
need good source data to ultimately create great visualizations, and they
are the reasons this topic was written. These data sets, and the systems or
processes that create them, become the basis for all the analysis you will
do. Their capability to provide clean and accurate information, a consistent
approach to organization of the data, and completeness of the included fields
is directly proportional to the quality and quantity of analysis that those sets
of data will support.
CoMMon DATA SeT eleMenTS
Data sets share a number of elements or qualities that help you work with
them and navigate their contents to reach the information you're looking
for. This section dives deeper into those to help you understand what to pay
attention to.
