← All decks

Data Analysis Patterns

Answer real questions with data you can trust.

Methods for answering real questions with data, for analysts and anyone else who works with numbers. The cards take you from a vague request to a scoped question, through getting and cleaning data, exploring it and separating real patterns from coincidence, to simple models, clear charts and recommendations a team can rerun and trust. No particular tool is assumed.

48 cards · 8 suits · 5 recipes · 2 missions

What's inside

• Frame6Is it clear what decision this answer serves?
• Get And Clean6Can you trust what the data really is?
• Explore6Have you looked at the shape before summarising?
• Find What's Real6Would the pattern survive a sceptical second look?
• Model Just Enough6Is your model simpler than the question allows?
• Show It6Does the chart make the comparison obvious?
• Land It6Will the finding lead to a decision?
• Data In The Team6Could someone else rerun and check this work?

A few cards

Frame

Decision Behind The Ask

Find out what prompted the question and what the asker will do with the answer.

Explore

Look Before You Summarise

Plot the raw values first, because very different data can share the same summary.

Model Just Enough

Naive Baseline First

Before you build a model, check what the dullest possible guess would have scored.

One card in full

Land It

Finding, Meaning, Action

Follow every finding with what it means for the asker and what you'd do about it.

"Conversion fell 3%" is a finding. Readers then have to work out alone whether it matters, and most won't. Do that work for them: every finding travels with what it means for them and what you'd do about it.

How to use it

1. Write the finding in one sentence, with the number and the period.
2. Underneath, write what it means for this asker: which goal, budget or plan it touches, and by how much.
3. Then write the action you recommend, with an owner if you can name one, and what would change your mind.
4. If you can't fill the meaning line, ask whether the finding belongs in the report at all.
5. If the action is "keep watching", say for what, and until when.

Example

A hypothetical city council analyst reports: "Missed bin collections rose from 0.8% to 1.5% in March, nearly all in the two depots that switched rounds. At current volumes that's about 4,000 extra missed collections a quarter. Recommend reviewing the new route plan for those depots this month; if April falls back below 1%, drop it."

Watch out

• Recommending more than the data supports. Match the size of the action to how sure you are.
• Burying the action under the method. Lead with it.

It answers the Decision Behind The Ask; see Size It In Their Units and One-Page Findings.

Recipes

• Clean Before You Count: Trace the source, fix the grain, check the joins, explain the blanks, sort out the extremes and write every fix as a rule you can replay.
• Dashboard Trust Audit: Read what each number really means, trace where it comes from, tie it out, test its joins, write it down and retire what nobody uses.
• From Analysis To Ask: Turn each finding into a meaning and an action, size it in the asker's units, say how sure you are, keep the caveats that matter and answer the sceptic first.
• Same-Day Answer: Find the decision behind the request, box the time, sketch the output, check the total and the rough size, then hand over one page.
• Why The Number Moved: Plot it over time, split the rate into its parts, find where the change lives, separate mix from rate, check the extremes, then try to break your explanation.

Missions

• Scope an analysis: from a vague request such as "can you look into churn?" to a one-page analysis plan with the decision it serves, the question, the hypotheses, the data needed, a sketch of the output and a time box.
• Ship a reproducible report: from a finished analysis that lives on one person's machine to a reviewed report anyone can rerun from raw data, with the data snapshot pinned, the choices logged and a reviewer's sign-off.

Related decks

Strategy Patterns

Choose where to play and how to win.

56 cards

Innovation Patterns

Find, shape and test new ideas on purpose.

56 cards

Decision-making Patterns

Decide well, alone or as a group.

54 cards

← All decks