Question

COURSE: IT Decision Support Systems

Differentiate between Descriptive and Prescriptive Analytics. What types of tools/data are used in each of these analytics?

Answer 1

Descriptive analytics utilizes the stored data to analyze about what happened in the past with the organization, it gives an insight. For an organization it is very important to analyze the past events to identify any loopholes to take strategic decision. For descriptive analysis, historical data of the company is used. For eq. If there was a disruption in companies operation for some time, then what was the impact of the incident to the company or to the clients, how much business was compromised.

Data aggregation and data mining techniques are used for Descriptive analytics. Matlab, Excel, Variance and Standard Deviation Calculator are some of the tools used for descriptive analytics.

Predictive analytics is used to predict what might happen to the organization,thus try to understand the future. The prediction is based on the present data available with respect to the organization. In this a statement is made which has not already happened with the organization. For eg. The organization will reach to 1 million subscriber in next 1 year, or the organization may loose 20% of their business if they didn't improve their customer service

Statistics and Forecast techniques are used for predictive analytics. Sisense, IBM SPSS, SAS Advanced Analytics are some of the tools that are used for this