Understanding the data you have
Once you have gone through the process of collecting and storing data, it can be tempting to dive straight into the more interesting and exciting work of training machine learning models or building dashboards to present to your customers or stakeholders.
However, an important stage before model training or presenting results is to explore and understand the data you have, as well as its main characteristics, patterns and trends in the data, and potential anomalies or outliers.
EDA is a fundamental step in the data analysis process that involves systematically examining datasets to understand their main characteristics, identify patterns and trends, and uncover potential anomalies or outliers. EDA typically precedes more formal statistical or machine learning modeling, and its primary goal is to provide insights and context that will inform further analysis and model development.
The importance of EDA cannot be overstated. It not only helps...