Types of Question
"Doing data analysis requires quite a bit of thinking and we believe that when you’ve completed a good data analysis, you’ve spent more time thinking than doing." - Roger Peng
- Descriptive - "seeks to summarize a characteristic of a set of data"
- Exploratory - "analyze the data to see if there are patterns, trends, or relationships between variables" (hypothesis generating)
- Inferential - "a restatement of this proposed hypothesis as a question and would be answered by analyzing a different set of data" (hypothesis testing)
- Predictive - "determine the impact on one factor based on other factor in a population - to make a prediction"
- Causal - "asks whether changing one factor will change another factor in a population - to establish a causal link"
- Mechanistic - "establish how the change in one factor results in change in another factor in a population - to determine the exact mechanism"
Descriptive
- Which states have the highest onion production and sales?
- Which city (Mandi's) have the highest sales?
- What is the average price for Onion across a year in Bangalore?
- ...
Exploratory & Inferential
- Is there a large difference between High and Low prices of Onion in a day?
- What is the trend of onion price across days or months in Bangalore?
- How is the price on onion correlated with volume of onion?
- How is the export volume of onion correlated to domestic production volume?
- ...
Predictive
- What is the price of onion likely to be next day?
- What is the price of onion likely to be next month?
- What will be the sales quantity of onion tommorrow in Delhi?
- ...
Causal
- Does the change in production of onion have an impact on the onion prices?
- Does the change in rainfall in monsoon have an impact on onion prices?
- ...
Mechanistic
- How does change in onion production impact the price of onion?
- How does onion export volumes impact the prices of onion in local markets in India?
- ...