We have, at some point, wondered why data analysis is important. So, there are millions of companies across the world that generate a lot of data and they literally work with this generated data. These companies depend on data to make crucial decisions which can impact their businesses. Data most often in its raw format has to be converted into meaningful information which can then be used by organizations. This is done by analyzing the generated data and for this, we have Data Analysis. So what is Data Analysis?
It’s not just a single step but a set of processes. In other words, is the process of collecting data then cleaning it by removing the irrelevant data and then this data is transformed into meaningful information. Just like the process of gathering all the pieces of a puzzle together and fit them accordingly to bring out a beautiful picture. Data analysis also works on almost the same grounds. To achieve the goals of data analysis we use a number of data analysis tools. Companies rely on these tools to gather and transform their data into meaningful insights. So which tool should you choose to analyze your data? Which tool should you learn if you want to make a career in this field? The following tools are the most used for data analysis.
Tableau
Powerful tool for business intelligence and data analysis, tableau is an interactive data visualization software company founded in Jan 2003 in Mountain View California. Tableau is a data visualization software that is used for data science and business intelligence. It can create a wide range of different visualization to interactively present the data and showcase insights. We also have tableau desktop, tableau public, tableau server, tableau online, and tableau reader. Data analysis is very fast with tableau and the visualizations created are in the form of dashboards and worksheets. Tableau delivers interactive dashboards that support insights on-the-fly. It can translate queries to visualizations and import all ranges and sizes of data writing simple SQL queries can help join multiple data sets and then build reports out of it you can create transparent filters parameters and highlighters. Tableau allows you to ask questions spot trends and identify opportunities. With the help of tableau online you can connect with cloud databases, Amazon redshift, and Google bigquery. The company using Tableau are (to name a few)
- Deloitte
- Adobe
- Cisco
- Amazon
Moving on to our next data analysis tool,
Power Bi
Power Bi is a business analytic solution that lets you visualize your data and share insights across your organization or embed them in your app or website it can connect to hundreds of data sources and bring your data to life with live dashboards and reports. Power Bi is the collective name for a combination of cloud-based apps and services that help organizations callate, manage, and analyze data from a variety of sources through a user-friendly interface. It is built on the foundation of Microsoft Excel and has several components such as Windows desktop application called Power Bi Desktop and online software which is a service called power bi service, mobile power bi apps available on windows phones and tablets as well as for iOS and Android devices. It has an easy drag-and-drop functionality with features that make data visually appealing. You can create reports without having the knowledge of ami programming language. Power bi helps users see not only what’s happened in the past and what’s happening in the present but also what might happen in the future. It offers a wide range of detailed and attractive visualizations to create reports and dashboards. You can select several charts and graphs from the visualization pane. Power bi has machine learning capabilities with which it can spot patterns in data and use those patterns to make informed predictions and run what-if scenarios. Power bi supports multiple data sources such as Excel, CSV, Oracle, SQL server, PDF, XML files. The platform integrates with other popular business management tools like SharePoint office 365 and Dynamics 365 as well as other non microsoft products like Spark Hadoop, Google Analytics,…
Some company using Power bi:
- Adobe
- AXA
- Carlsberg
- Capgemini
- Nestle
Qlikview
Qlikview software is a product of click for business intelligence and data visualization. Qlikview is a business discovery platform that provides self-service bi for all business users and organizations. With Qlikview you can analyze data and use your data discoveries to support decision making Qlikview is a leading business intelligence and analytics platform. It provides interactive guided analytics within memory storage technology during the process of data discovery and interpretation of collected data. The Qlikview software helps the user by suggesting possible interpretations. It uses a new patent in memory architecture for data storage. All the data from the different sources is loaded in the RAM of the system and it is ready to be retrieved from there. It has the capability of efficient social and mobile data discovery. Social data discovery offers to share individual data insights within groups or out of it. Qlickview performs OLAP and ETL features to perform analytical operations extract data from multiple sources transform it for usage and loaded to a data warehouse. Companies using it:
- Mercedes-benz
- Capgemini
- Citibank
- Cognizant
- Accenture
Apache Spark
Apache spark is an open-source engine developed specifically for handling large-scale data processing and analytics. It offers the ability to access data in a variety of sources including Hadoop distributed file system (HDFS) OpenStack, Swift, Amazon s3, and Cassandra. It allows to store and process data in real time across various clusters of computers using simple programming constructs. Apache spark is designed to accelerate analytics on Hadoop while providing a complete suite of complementary tools that include a fully featured machine learning library, a graph processing engine and stream processing. Its important features: it stores data in the ram hence it can access the data quickly and accelerate the speed of analytics. Spark helps to run an application in a Hadoop cluster up to hundred times faster in memory and ten times faster when running on disk. It supports multiple languages and allows the developers to write applications in Java, Scala, R, or Python. Spark comes up with 80 high-level operators for interactive querying. Analytics can be performed better as spark has a rich set of SQL queries machine learning algorithms, complex analytics, etc. Apache spark provides fault tolerance through spark RDD spark Resilient Distributed Data sets are designed to handle the failure of any worker node in the cluster thus it ensures that the loss of data reduces to 0. The companies using Spark:
- IQVIA
- Lockheed Martin
- eBay
- Netflix
- Conviva
R & Python
R is a programming language which is used for analysis as well it has traditionally been used in academics and research. Python is a high-level programming language which has a Python data analysis library it is used for everything starting from importing data from Excel spreadsheets to processing them for analysis. When it comes to the availability of R and Python it is very easy. Both R and Python are completely free hence it can be used without any license. R used to compute everything in memory and hence the computations were limited but now it has changed both R and Python have options for parallel computations and good data handling capabilities. All the latest features are available without any delay.
The companies using R:
- uber
The companies using Python:
- Amazon
SAS
sas facilitates analysis reporting and predictive modeling with the help of powerful visualizations and dashboards. in SAS data is extracted and categorized which helps in identifying and analyzing data patterns. Using sas, better analysis of data is achieved by using automatic code generation. It allows you to access through Microsoft Office by letting you create reports using it and by distributing them through it. SAS helps with an easy understanding of complex data and allows you to create interactive dashboards and reports. The companies using SAS are:
- like Genpact
- IQVIA
- Accenture
- IBM
Knime
Knime is a free and open source data analytics reporting and integration platform. It can integrate various components for machine learning and data mining through its modular data pipelining concept. Knime has been used in pharmaceutical research and other areas like CRM, customer data, analysis business intelligence, text mining and financial data analysis. Knine provides an interactive graphical user interface to create visual workflows using the drag-and-drop feature. It supports multi-threaded in memory data processing and allows users to visually create data flows selectively execute some or all analysis steps and later inspect the results models and interactive views. Knime server automates workflow execution and supports team based collaboration. It integrates various other open-source projects such as machine learning algorithms. Knime allows analysis of 300 million custom addresses, 20 million cell images and 10 million molecular structures. Some of the companies hiring for knime are:
- United Health Group
- ASML
- Fractal
- Atos
- LEGO
Talend
Talend is an open source software platform which offers data integration and management. It is specialized in big data integration. Talend is available both in open source and premium versions and it is one of the best tools for cloud computing and big data integration. It helps with quick deployment and development and offers open source tools. Talend provides a unified platform and allows the user to integrate with many databases, SaaS and other technologies with the help of the data integration platform, it is possible to build flat files relational databases and cloud apps 10 times faster. The companies using talent are:
- Air France
- L’Oreal
- Capgemini
- Domino’s Pizza
rapidminer
a data science software platform, rapidminer provides an integrated environment for data preparation, analysis, machine learning, and deep learning. It is used in almost every business and commercial sector. Rapidminer also supports all the steps of the machine learning process. Its features: it firstly offers the ability to drag-and-drop and it is very convenient to just drag drop some columns as you are exploring a dataset and working on some analysis. Rapidminer allows the usage of any data and it also gives an opportunity to create models which are used as a basis for decision making and formulation of strategies.It has data exploration features such as graphs descriptive statistics and visualization which allows users to get valuable insights it also has more than 1500 operators for every data transformation and analysis. The companies using rapidminer are:
- The Caribbean Airline (LIAT)
- The United Health Group
- American online payment company (PayPal)
- Mobilkom austria
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel is used by data analysts to run basic queries and to create pivot tables graphs and charts. Excel also features a macro programming language called visual basic for applications VBA. It is easy to use and one of the best tools for data analysis developed by Microsoft, Excel is basically a spreadsheet program. Using Excel you can create grids of numbers text and formula it. It is one of the widely used tools available in a small or large setup. Most of the organizations today use Excel few of them that use it for analysis are:
- The uk-based company EY
- UrbanPro
- WiPro
- Amazon.
Thanks for reading …
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