The simplest definition of Analytics is "the science of analysis". A simple and practical definition, however, would be how an entity(i. e. , business) arrives at an optimal or realistic decision based on existing data. Business managers may choose to make decisions based on past experiences or rules of thumb, or there might be other qualitative aspects to decision making; but unless there is data involved in the process, it would not be considered analytics.

Common applications of Analytics include the study of business data using statistical analysis in order to discover and understand historical patterns with an eye to predicting and improving business performance in the future. Also, some people use the term to denote the use of mathematics in business. Others hold that field of analytics include the use of Operations Research, Statistics and Probability. However, it would be erroneous to limit the field of analytics to only statistics and mathematics.

Analytics closely resembles statistical analysis and data mining, but tends to be based on modeling involving extensive computation. Statistics is a mathematical science pertaining to the collection analysis interpretation or explanation and presentation of Data. Data mining is the process of Sorting through large amounts of data and picking out relevant information Some fields within the area of analytics are enterprise decision management, marketing analytics, predictive science, strategy science, credit risk analysis and fraud analytics.

Portfolio analysis

A common application of business analytics is portfolio analysis. In finance a portfolio is an appropriate mix of or collection of investments held by an institution or a private individual In this, a bank or lending agency has a collection of accounts of varying value and risk. A banker or bank is a Financial institution whose primary activity is to act as a payment agent for customers and to borrow and lend money The accounts may differ by the social status (wealthy, middle-class, poor, etc. ) of the holder, the geographical location, its net value, and many other factors. The lender must balance the return on the loan with the risk of default for each loan. The question is then how to evaluate the portfolio as a whole.

For instance, the least risk loan may be to the very wealthy, but there are a very limited number of wealthy people. On the other hand there are many poor that can be lent to, but at greater risk. Some balance must be struck that maximizes return and minimizes risk. The analytics solution may combine time series analysis, with many other issues in order to make decisions on when to lend money to these different borrower segments, or decisions on the interest rate charged to members of a portfolio segment to cover any losses among members in that segment. In Statistics, Signal processing, and many other fields a time series is a sequence of Data points measured typically at successive times spaced at (often

See also

• Predictive analytics
• Data mining
• Machine learning
• List of software engineering topics
• Statistics
• OLAP
• Business intelligence
• Web analytics
• Business analytics
• WebTrends
• Google Analytics
• Operations research

Predictive analytics encompasses a variety of techniques from Statistics and Data mining that analyze current and historical data to make predictions about future Data mining is the process of Sorting through large amounts of data and picking out relevant information Machine learning is a subfield of Artificial intelligence that is concerned with the design and development of Algorithms and techniques that allow computers to "learn" This list complements the Software engineering article giving more details and examples Statistics is a mathematical science pertaining to the collection analysis interpretation or explanation and presentation of Data. Online Analytical Processing or OLAP (ˈoʊlæp is an approach to quickly provide answers to analytical queries that are multi-dimensional in nature Business intelligence ( BI) refers to technologies applications and practices for the collection integration analysis and presentation of business Information and Web analytics is the study of online behaviour in order to improve it Business analytics is how organizations gather and interpret Data in order to make better business decisions and to optimize Business processes. WebTrends Inc is a private company headquartered in Portland Oregon Google Analytics (abbreviated GA) is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed Statistics about the visitors to a Website Operations Research (OR in North America South Africa and Australia and Operational Research in Europe is an interdisciplinary branch of applied Mathematics and

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