2017-2018 exchange Jan Feb 2018 Newsletter FINAL | Page 17

ence lies in the nature, intent and temporal aspect of the question be-
ing asked.
As shown in the model developed by Tom Davenport, a report is
simply a vehicle for answering the relatively simple question of
“what happened”. This type of question is focused on hindsight and
is generally grouped into a class of questions known as “descriptive
analytics” which focus on getting answers to questions that start with
“what happened”, “where did it happen”, and “when did it happen” and
are focused on understanding answers from an historic perspective.
For example, “What were our sales for product B last month?” Or
“Where did product B sell the most?” And, “What did customer XYZ
buy and how much was spent in the month of March?”. These rela-
tively simple and straightforward questions of business performance
of the past have often historically been best satisfied via reports,
which are usually run on a repeated basis.
Questions of greater complexity, however, are often focused on
achieving special insight (or foresight) - exploring the root caus-
es behind business events, the possibilities of different out-
comes, and forecasting, predicting, and even optimizing future
outcomes. These are the higher order questions pursued by data sci-
entists, statisticians and applied mathematicians utilizing mathemati-
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