Examining the Various Types of

Data Analytics
Earlier in this chapter, I describe those stakeholders in an organization who would
typically use Power BI. I’ve tried to show, at a very high level, how each of these
stakeholders takes data that has been created and transforms it into something
useful using Power BI Desktop or Power BI Services. The only thing left for you to
do before I let you loose in the Power BI forest involves learning the type of ana-
lytics produced by Power BI. If you have ever read a generalist book on business
intelligence, this section may not hold new information for you. If this is your first
foray into BI or learning what makes Power BI different among the analytic prod-
uct outputs, this section is your one-stop shop to summarize the details.

You can produce five types of analytics using Power BI: x, descriptive, diagnostic,
predictive, prescriptive, and cognitive. Depending on the business goal and appli-
cation within Power BI, the analytic products are a bit different. Table 2-1 describes
the five types of analytics, including each one’s purpose and where you’ll most
likely have success using each analytics type.

TABLE 2-1 Types of Analytics Produced in Power BI

Type What It Does

Descriptive Helps answer questions based on historical data. Descriptive analytics also summarize large
datasets and describe outcomes.

Diagnostic Explains why events happen. Typically, diagnostic analytics support descriptive analytics as a
secondary form of analytics that allows you to discover the cause of events. Analysts look for
anomalies in datasets, reports, and KPIs. The use of statistical techniques available within
Power BI helps users discover relationships in the data and trends.

Predictive Helps answer questions about what might potentially happen in the future. Taking historical
trends and finding patterns, the resultant output is an observation of what is likely to occur.
Techniques used to derive results involve combinations of statistical methodologies and
machine learning capabilities available in Power BI.

Prescriptive Answers the question about which actions one must take to meet a goal. Taking the data
gathered, organizations can address issues based on unknown conditions. Such analytics
also rely heavily on big data analytics and existing datasets being evaluated by Power BI’s
machine learning engine to find patterns, which helps deliver on different outcomes.

Cognitive Referred to at times as inferential analytics; lets the analyst pull together data from across
analytics the datasets to detect patterns, develop conclusions, and set up a knowledge bank for future
learning. The keyword here is future because what is learned and seen is used to self-guide
for the future. If conditions change, the knowledge bank adjusts accordingly. Because infer-
ences are unstructured thoughts and hypotheses, it’s up to machine learning solutions
within Power BI to process the data change, make sense of the existing data sources, and
create data correlations.

CHAPTER 2 The Who, How, and What of Power BI 31