Descriptive Analytics

Descriptive analytics is the analysis of historical data to describe what happened. It summarises records into measures people can read, such as totals, averages, counts, percentages and trends, and compares them across time periods, products, regions or customers.

It is the foundation of most reporting, from monthly sales reports to finance dashboards, and it answers questions that start with 'how much', 'how many' or 'which'. Descriptive analytics does not explain why something happened or predict what comes next; diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive analytics build on it for that.

For example, a retail chain reports that sales rose 8% this quarter, mostly from its southern stores, while returns stayed flat.