By the end of this page you will have done a real piece of data analysis. It is a small one, on paper, with arithmetic you can do in your head. You will also know what the actual jobs look like hour by hour, which is the part most beginner articles skip, and what to learn first if you want one.
The work itself is four moves. You start with a question that has a decision behind it. You get the records of what happened. You split those records into groups and compare the groups. Then you say what to do about it. Everything else, every tool and every job title, is a variation on those four moves.
The short version. Data analysis is looking at records of things that already happened and finding a pattern that changes what someone does next. If nothing changes, it was not analysis. It was a report.
Many records become one comparison, and the comparison points at a choice.
What data analysis actually is
