I was hoping to get some suggested sites or books I could use to do more with our Analytics. I do not have a statistics background, but I work in an area where ideas backed up by data get a lot further than just an idea. I've been doing the best I can with excel's basic formulas to try and gain better insights from our Analytics, but I feel like I could do more than just averages and such, when we have a huge range of data. I know there are ways to remove/exclude outliers or compartmentalize our analytic data, but I'm not sure where I should start.<p>I would appreciate any suggested reading for someone (novice) who is trying to improve their data analysis skills, specifically as they pertain to the basic web analytics data set.
The most important thing you need to consider in my opinion, is first "what am I looking for". Data analysis is two things, working with data and getting insights from that data.
For the first thing, you can find many books online, just youtube "data mining" "data analysis" and stuff like that. It's merely a technical issue, and it can be learned fast. For that, you can begin here <a href="http://www.revolutionanalytics.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.revolutionanalytics.com/</a> if you want more than just excel.
Second, is how to understand and interprete these results, this is more complex and yet easier. Begin by getting some dataset, clearly setting a goal and test it by running some algorithms or methods on this data. That's the basical workflow. Sometimes you'll happen to discover patterns, but you have to observe and be patient. And remember, without human insight, data is just a bunch of numbers..
Cheers mate