John Hopkins Professor Jeffrey Leek summarized six types of data analyses:
- Descriptive – descriptive summary of the data, e.g., the mean, standard deviation;
- Exploratory – “an approach to analyzing data sets to find previously unknown relationships”;
- Inferential – testing theories of some population in general using its samples;
- Predictive – using data of some subjects to predict values for another;
- Causal – “to find out what happens to one variable when you change another”;
- Mechanistic – “understand the exact changes in variables that lead to changes in other variables for individual objects”