Making the Leap from Reporting to Data Analysis

Stacia Varga

You might be familiar with using queries to retrieve data from a data source to display in a report, but how do you go one step further to perform data analysis? Report developers and even power users often produce reports to meet a stated specification and answer the same questions over and over in a specific format. Important skills for the report developer include an understanding of the data sources and the ability to write queries. Having these skills when moving from a reporting role to an analytical role is a good start, but there are additional skills to develop. In this session, we review the basic process of data analysis, discuss how to reveal and explore relationships in your data, and learn how to apply simple statistics to your data for deeper insights.