Post a total of 3 substantive responses over 2 separate days for full participation. This includes your initial post and 2 replies to other students or your faculty member.

Post a total of 3 substantive responses over 2 separate days for full participation. This includes your initial post and 2 replies to other students or your faculty member.

Initial Post

This week’s required readings explain the role that analytics plays in the modern business environment. Consider the following questions and respond in a minimum of 175 words:

• How is data analytics different from statistics?
• Analytics tools fall into 3 categories:descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive. What are the main differences among these categories?
• Explain how businesses use analytics to convert raw operational data into actionable information. Provide at least 1 example.
• Consider the organization you work for (or another organization you’re familiar with). Does this organization use data analytics?If so, how is it used? If not, how could the organization use data analytics to improve its performance?

Peer Replies

Reply to at least 2 of your classmates or your faculty member. Be constructive and professional.

Peer 1

How data analytics different from statistics?

After reading the article “Data science vs. : two cultures and How analytics has changed in the last 10 years (and how it stayed the same) I feel that the difference between statics (data science) and data analytics that statics allow companies to prepares and explores data while data analytics is used to assist companies to make informed decisions and about performance based upon it data about the past, present, and future performance.

Technology has allowed for data analytics to take “Big Data” and help make it useful to organizations by making it relevant to the needs to make informed managerial decisions while technology in statics’ has made it easier to gather, prepare and allowed for the organization to explore the data. Statics time consuming and often organizations stopped at the gathering stage. I work for Head Start and this organization in existence for over 50 years collecting only the Federal level use data to make overall changes.

In the past three years the federal government has pushed its contractors () to use the data they collect to make decisions within their organizations. They have made opportunities to include training regarding Data basic stages. This is still far behind what I have read in these articles. Many of the have created within their organizations related to Data Analysis. In my own organizations as the Director of Operations I was unaware about the technology that has evolved to analysis the data and make it more usable for informed managerial decisions.

Analytics tools fall into 3 categories descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive. What is the main difference these categories? The difference between these categories is that descriptive tells what has in the past, predictive predicts the future and prescriptive recommends what actions to take and the outcomes of those actions when taken.

In our current organizations we are not using the technology to assist us in data after this class I feel that I will be better informed to present a case of purchasing and using the software to help us analysis all the data we collect at different levels of our operations to include the Board of Directors in the future. Currently, we are at the stage to of just exploring data. It has impacted some of our most recent decision making related to purchases and example is we collect health information on children birth to 5 years.

In collecting this data we noticed that in physicals when it came to eye test often the remarks on the physicals stated that the children were uncooperative. This allowed us to explore how we could obtain accurate information on the children ages 3 to 5 visions. We purchased a device that allows us to quickly determine if further testing is needed by a specialist regarding children’s vision. When children were referred to a specialist 90% were prescribed glasses. We are currently looking at the effects of technology devices usage and the increase number from our descriptive data to find the correlation.

Peer 2

Statistics and analytics are branches of data science. Data analytics focuses on the exploration of an individual’s specific data. It applies advanced tools to collect data, make predictions and realize the trends. Statistics on the other hand, goes beyond the analysis as it emphasizes interpretation, explanation, and presentation of the data.

The primary difference that exists among the three categories of analytic tools is that in descriptive analytics, the fundamental questions to answer is concerning what happened. It provides a summary of large sets of data that describes the results. Predictive analytics is concerned with explaining the issue of the future occurrences (“What is Data Analytics? – Master’s in Data Science,” n.d.) In this case, the historical data is essential for the identification of the trends and the determination of their likelihood of occurrence. Prescriptive analytics emphasizes on answering the question on the necessary action to be taken. It provides a piece of supportive evidence on making data-driven decisions.

Analytics is used in deciding the application of Business Intelligence, where the analysis made is considered in ensuring the objectives are met. For example, a company that wants to improve their customers’ experience can analyze data on the customers’ feedback about the services it provides and uses the results to improve on the areas where there are gaps.

Samsung is one of the organizations which use data analytics. The company analyzes its business by observing the trends of product purchase of any newly introduced product. They collect data on the sales and the customers’ feedback to guide them on the right ways to improve their production and the customers’ experience. The company can, therefore, thrive in a highly competitive market.