Some of the data analysis tools out there can be pretty bizarre. For example, you might use a tool that lets you compare how easily people can learn a language, or one that tells you what the best time to enter your workplace’s main entrance is based on weather data.
Business analysts also have a job profile of data analyst and even the business analyst salary increases exponentially.
But the strange truth behind these tools isn’t all about their weirdness. They actually serve an important purpose and make it easier for people to get a handle on how certain variables affect people in different ways.
These tools can help any kind of business to learn how their marketing or public relations strategies could change based on historical data, for example. And because of that, the tools are often necessary for businesses to survive in a world where there is so much information to go through.
Some of the bizarre truths behind data analysis tools are:
1. Most of them were created by nerds with too much time on their hands.
It’s hard to believe that some of the tools out there were actually created because people had too much free time on their hands and wanted to see how they could use it to help businesses understand their consumers better. Like we said, though, these tools are important to businesses in order for them to stay competitive in today’s market.
2. They can be used by pretty much anybody.
Because so many of these data analysis tools are available online, pretty much anybody can use them—even those without a lot of experience with data analysis or statistics. They can be used by people working in dog-walking businesses, for example, so the information the tools provide is crucial to those businesses’ survival.
3. They aren’t always as accurate as they look.
It’s easy to make something that appears to have a lot of data in it and seems pretty accurate because of how easy it is to drag things around and click on things, but some of these tools are not as accurate as they appear. Either the tools themselves are inaccurate or the data that comes from using them isn’t always real.
4. Some of these tools just don’t have enough data to make an accurate prediction.
Sometimes the data that comes from a certain tool isn’t very reliable at all, and that’s because there’s not a whole lot of it. Some of these tools don’t even have enough data to come up with an accurate calculation. And that means they probably aren’t going to be useful for a lot of things, which can hurt businesses.
5. Sometimes the information is more unreliable than not using the tool at all!
In some cases, using one of these tools isn’t going to help businesses understand their customers or whatever else it was the company was starting to see as a problem. And that means they can forget to fix the problem after they use the tool, which could be the reason the company made that mistake in the first place.
6. There are a lot of tools out there, but some of them don’t even have information for a business to use!
These tools have information for almost anyone to use, but some of them only have data from a small range of things. For example, some do not have information about prices as well as other kinds of data. But, the business might not be looking for this kind of data in the first place.
7. They can make business owners too reliant on the information.
There are a lot of tools out there that have plenty of information for a business owner to use, but using them can often lead to over-reliance on the data instead of using other methods to get a grasp on how things are going. It could even cause people not to trust their own instincts and real-life experience, which are pretty important things when it comes to running a business.
8. They can make you think something is better than it actually is.
There are some tools out there that provide information in a way that makes things seem a lot better or a lot worse than they really are. For example, one tool can tell you how many people are talking about your brand in a certain amount of time, but it might not be telling you how many positive and negative conversations there are out there for your brand. It could also tell you about something that’s being talked about more than it really is, which could lead to false assumptions about what things are really like for your business.
9. A lot of the information they provide is statistically unreliable.
Sometimes this information can be reliable, but other times it can’t. For example, one tool can tell you about how something is changing over time, but may not be telling you about what’s happening for your competitors in the same way. That could give you a very skewed idea about how certain things are going for your business based on inaccurate information that you shouldn’t rely on.
10. There’s some pretty creepy stuff out there.
This isn’t just referring to the data analysis tools themselves; it’s also referring to some of the apps and programs behind them. For example, some of these apps have lenses that you can use to perform different kinds of facial recognition on people. Whoever is running the tool will have to give permission for it to access their camera and microphone, and that could be pretty creepy.
Conclusion:
We don’t mean to sound like we’re lambasting these data analysis tools. In fact, they’re important for many businesses to survive in the way that we mentioned above. But it’s important for business owners to be careful when determining which ones are going to be most useful for their company and which ones aren’t worth relying on.
There are a lot of different kinds of data analysis tools out there, and each one has its own strengths and weaknesses. It’s also important for business owners to remember that not all of them will give the same results or provide the same type of information they need.
