The eCourse Big Data on the Laudius platform has more than just the theory around Big Data. Besides learning what Big Data is and ethics in Big Data. There is also an explanation of the 4 most used statistical analysis methods in Big Data. The 4 types of analysis are also used in other kinds of research.
In the eCourse Big Data book ‘Succes met Big Data’ is used. The 4 types of analysis are briefly explained in the book, but that is not all the material to explain the analysis methods. There are explanation videos and pdfs about all 4 types of analysis methods. As a bonus there are cases in which the student can practice the analysis methods.
In the ecourse Excel with the combination of Real Stat addon is used to analyze the data in the cases. This is a free addon, which can be installed in Excel with the explanation pdf. In Real Stat it is easier to do statistical analysis than with formulas in Excel itself. Of course the students are allowed to use SPSS, R, Python, etc. if they prefer these tools and have them.
There is a whole blog dedicated to the analysis method decision tree on my website with an example. In short it is the analysis method to make choices that follow each other. It can be an easy choice or more complicated decision that has to be made in research. The blog 'Using a decision tree to determine where to go'.
With the Cluster analysis method the student makes groups with the available data. The clusters are made based on similar attribute. Depending on which kind of cluster the groups can contain all the same amount of datapoints, or the groups can be different in size.
In the book the analysis method Linear regression is explained. This is the basic for regression. As a bonus there is a video explaining multiple regression in the Big Data eCourse. Most research, especially Big Data will deal with multiple regression, because there are more than one element (characteristics) influencing the outcome of the research.
Nearest Neighbor is a combination of cluster and linear regression method in short. This method is used to recognize patrons and images. This one is very important now with all the observation cameras following us in our daily life in public space. This has also to do with privacy:
Which images can be used
How is the analysis set to the privacy of the public using the public spaces that is analyzed.
Therefore there must be a balance between privacy and safety.
Of course there are more kinds of analysis methods with which Big Data can be analyzed, but all are a variant on the ones already described earlier. In the basic of the research before other analysis as predictive analysis, etc. are done one of the 4 methods is used to interpret the data and choose a further analysis method.