ABSTRACT
Exploratory data analysis (EDA) is quantitative detective work according to John Tukey [1977]. EDA is the philosophy that data should first be explored without assumptions about probabilistic models, error distributions, number of groups, relationships between the variables, etc. for the purpose of discovering what they can tell us about the phenomena we are investigating. The goal of EDA is to explore the data to reveal patterns and features that will help the analyst better understand, analyze, and model the data. With the advent of powerful desktop computers and high resolution graphics capabilities, these methods and techniques are within the reach of every statistician, engineer, and data analyst.
