What is Analytics?

Insurance is a data-driven industry and analytics is a key to deriving information from data. But what is analytics? Making data-driven business decisions has been described as “business analytics,” “business intelligence,” and “data science.” These terms, among others, are sometimes used interchangeably and sometimes used separately, referring to distinct domains of applications. As an example of such distinctions, business intelligence may focus on processes of collecting data, often through databases and data warehouses, whereas business analytics utilizes tools and methods for statistical analyses of data. In contrast to these two terms that emphasize business applications, the term data science can encompass broader applications in many scientific domains.

For our purposes, we use the term analytics to refer to the process of using data to make decisions. This process involves gathering data, understanding models of uncertainty, making general inferences, and communicating results.

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