Structuring a data-driven problem

There are three categories to most data-driven decisions.

• Exploratory analysis: Helps drive decisions by confirming your prior expectations, understanding or improving your fluency without a specific outcome.
• Explanatory analysis: Helps you learn complex interactions of a business, situation or operation. You're really trying to understand the drivers of a specific topic.
• Predictive analysis: Rather than a review of historical patterns, you're now trying to use those patterns to produce a future likely outcome.