The Value of Exploratory Data Analysis - Silicon Valley Data Science

Editor's note: Chloe (as well as other members of SVDS) will be speaking at TDWI Accelerate in Boston. Find more information, and sign up to receive our slides here. From the outside, data science is often thought to consist wholly of advanced statistical and machine learning techniques. However, there is another key component to any data science endeavor that is often undervalued or forgotten: exploratory data analysis (EDA). At a high level, EDA is the practice of using visual and quantitative methods to understand and summarize a dataset without making any assumptions about its contents.