Analytics dictionary › Data

What is Data

Data is a set of values of qualitative or quantitative variables collected for reference or analysis.

Data is collected and analyzed; data only becomes information suitable for making decisions once it has been analyzed in some fashion.

The amount of data that is being collected and stored has been rapidly growing in sync with websites and other connected services, including IoT.

With modern technologies and innovative storing options, collecting data has become so easy that many companies collect more data than they could ever analyze.

The amount of data that a person could analyze is very time consuming and limited. The rise of AI and machine learning have brought a new era in data analyzing – these new technologies are using complex algorithms to draw useful insights from enormous data sets.

Data Visualization in Google Analytics
Data Visualization in Google Analytics

In web analytics, the most popular tool to collect and visualize data is Google Analytics, also shown in the screenshot above.


Last modified: April 20, 2017


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