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Data Science & Analytics vocabulary · Exploratory Analysis

Exploratory data analysis

Meaning in data science & analytics, with examples

nounCore term

In data science & analytics, exploratory data analysis means: The first stage of an analysis, in which you summarise and plot a dataset to understand its structure, spot patterns and problems, and form questions to test.

In Turkish: keşifsel veri analizi, EDA

How it is used

Usually shortened to EDA, said letter by letter. You do EDA at the start of every project, often in a notebook, using summary statistics, histograms and scatter plots before any modelling.

Example sentences

  1. During exploratory data analysis we noticed that half the customers had no age recorded.

  2. I'll share my exploratory data analysis notebook before we decide on a model.

Common collocations

  • do exploratory data analysis
  • EDA notebook
  • initial EDA
  • findings from EDA
  • summary statisticsA small set of numbers that describe a dataset at a glance, such as the count, mean, median, minimum, maximum and standard deviation of each column.
  • histogramA chart that shows the distribution of one numeric variable by dividing its range into intervals, called bins, and drawing a bar for how many values fall in each.
  • outlierA value that is very far from most of the other values in a dataset, for example one order of 50,000 dollars among orders of around 40 dollars.
  • distributionThe way the values of a variable are spread out, showing which values are common, which are rare and how far apart they are; often viewed as a histogram.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Exploratory Analysis

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