From the course: Learning Data Analytics: 1 Foundations

Learning to identify data

From the course: Learning Data Analytics: 1 Foundations

Learning to identify data

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- [Instructor] When most people think about data, they're likely thinking of spreadsheets or some type of chart or graph. We have to break it down further. I teach every new data analyst I encounter how to turn on their data lens. This will help them to interpret data points from anything that they're presented later in their careers. In my bootcamp, I literally show students random objects like staplers or pens and tell them to talk to me in data. Meaning, tell me the data they see. Most people when presented with a pen might answer things like color or category like pen or type like ink. As a data analyst, you need to begin to think about the things that matter with the pen, like the manufacturing of the pen, are you going to ship the pens? Do you even brand and ship the pens? What the point is, is to keep thinking about the data and the more you do, the more you discover. And data analysts who are in charge of finding and gathering data to present outcomes always need to turn on their lenses. This will let them think about the data they see and frankly, the data they don't see are can't see yet. So now that we've had the easy example of the pen I want to take it up a notch. Let's really get some understanding of data and how it's all around us. This is rush hour traffic in Los Angeles, what's the first thing you notice? For most people, it's the cars. You can see cars of every type, age, make, and model. You can see the cars are going in different directions. You can explore the car details right out to the nth degree. Let me give you another example. Do you see the license plates? That means that there's a license plate number which means that there is data in a registry somewhere and depending on that state means that registry data isn't in a multitude of places based on where the person is driving and where they're from. What else do you see about the car? Maybe things like the rate of speed? How closely they're traveling to the other cars around them. If your job is to think about data in relationship to traffic patterns, then the time of day matters, how many lanes matter? If we zoom out a bit from the cars themselves there's even more to look at, look at the signs on the freeway. But don't only look at the sign, think about the fact that the sign itself has to be created. What it says has to be created. Right down to where the reflective material is purchased, the color of the material, again, the type of sign, who manufacturers those types of signs, who pays for those signs, not to mention all the signs on the roads we don't see here. Again if you're assigned manufacturer, this data matters. And if you're required by law to make sure there are signs placed, this data matters. Let's go even further. Look at the concrete, look at the materials that are on the road that make the road, look at the paint on the freeway and just think to yourself all of the data just on the concrete alone. Concrete is interesting too because it's not only the materials, it's timing. There's only a certain amount of time before it's mixed that it has to be poured. Just a few things to think about if we're really considering all the data. Look at the time of day? What day is it? What year is it? What is the weather on this day? What was the weather on this day for the last hundred years. You may be like, why would that matter? If you you're managing the construction project or you're bidding the construction project, knowing the weather certainly matters. It matters when you bid it and it matters when you build it out because people use the roads to get where they're going in their cars. Oh no, I said people in their cars, which opens up a whole new avenue of data and human demographics, and the details of the people driving, but that's enough. I'm sure you get it by now. I've been told it's a blessing and a curse to teach about the data lens, but just remember, the next time you look at a simple spreadsheet, dataset or report, I promise you, if you turn it on your data lens it will help you to find all the data points you need, and even the data points you don't see.

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