ABSTRACT
Analytics is one of the current buzzwords that crops up in a wide range of contexts – business analytics, retail analytics, supply chain analytics, human resource analytics, and political analytics, to name but a few of the more frequent ones, and, of course, sports analytics. Analytics is data analysis to support decision making. Analytics encompasses a wide range of analytical methods. Statistical analysis is at the core of analytics but other non-statistical techniques such as linear programming, cluster analysis and network analysis are all used to support decision making and so should properly be included in analytics. This chapter expresses that analytics represents an evidence-based approach founded on the premise that decisions on the best course of action are more likely to be successful in terms of improved performance when all relevant available information is considered in a systematic manner rather than relying solely on intuitive judgment. Analytics consists of the three Ds – data, domain and decisions.
