Can you describe how Data Analysis is used by businesses and other organizations?
"Data analytics is one of the most significant developments in making businesses and other organizations more efficient and effective. The insight data science provides helps virtually every organization to improve its operations through a better focus on outcomes and more targeted information used for intelligent decision making. Examples of this include search engines ranking pages depending on the specific interests of the user, and social media filtering information which the user is not interested in. Another use of data analytics is in robotics, which uses machine learning to handle new situations not previously encountered. Finally, businesses can extract information from large and unstructured sets of data which can then be used to develop products and target their marketing."
While this appears to be another Technical Question, it is more of a General Question. The interviewer is likely to ask this early in the interview to establish a conversational tone for the interview and develop some avenues to follow-up questions. As with any interview question, your answer should relate to the company's operations and how you believe they use data analytics to run their business. You can usually determine this from the information provided on their website and in the job posting.
"As a Data Scientist, I've come across many examples of how businesses use data analysis to improve the results of their operations. For example, eCommerce firms can use data analysis to understand customer behavior, reduce churn, and better target their marketing. Financial organizations use it to evaluate investment opportunities and detect fraud. Healthcare companies employ data analysis to develop treatments for specific groups of patients."
Community answers are written by other candidates practicing this set. Reading how others frame the same question is one of the fastest ways to sharpen your own.
Anonymous Answer
Data Analysis provides the decision support system to a business where businesses can make rational decisions and action plans based on the facts extracted from analyzing data. To explain it by an example from the financial industry, data can be analyzed to find the trends related to sales numbers, to measure advertising efficacy, transportation costs, or wages versus productivity.
In simple words, any piece of data that could be used to make a business decision is potentially within the spectrum of a data analysis.
Marcie's Feedback
Excellent answer! You're right that businesses use data to make decisions that can impact everything from sales, advertising, transportation, wages, etc. Your answer is thorough and smart. Nice job!
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