Question

If you were given a large data set, such as the sales over the last year of our top 100 customers, what might you be able to do with these data? What might be the benefits of describing the data?

Alternative: Look for examples of descriptive statistics in the news or on websites. Then post a link to that publication or site, note the statistic used and determine if it was an appropriate use of that statistic.

Answer 1

The best thing to do with data such as sales over the last year of the top 100 customers would be to answer questions like:

1) what products sell the most.

2) what groups of people buy what product: This would be targeting who buys what.

3) Segment this data into meaningful chunks to help your marketing and selling activity. From this data, you can create a profile of what your most active customer buys and how often, identify those who only buy in cycles (or just for specific products), identify those who have stopped buying from you (lapsed customers), create a demand forecast for future products from the trend shown.