This guide gives you a test that takes ten seconds and tells you whether the thing you just built is a report or an analysis. Then it gives you four moves that turn one into the other. Every move has a worked SQL example and real numbers. The whole method is here.
What you actually do: take the number you just produced, and ask what someone would do differently because of it. If the honest answer is nothing, you have a report. Then you run the four moves below, in order, until the answer is a specific action a specific person can take on Monday.
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.
The same starting number, two endings.
The test: what would someone do differently?
