What do descriptive analytics specifically focus on?

Descriptive analytics specifically focuses on summarizing and interpreting historical data to provide insights into past events or trends. This type of analytics uses data aggregation and mining techniques to illustrate what has happened in a business or system over a specific period. By examining this data, organizations can identify patterns, understand behaviors, and gain insights into the effectiveness of previous strategies, which can inform future decisions.

This focus on the past differentiates descriptive analytics from other types of analytics, such as diagnostic analytics, which aims to explain why something happened, predictive analytics, which forecasts future outcomes, and prescriptive analytics, which provides recommendations for future actions. Each of these other forms of analytics serves distinct purposes that go beyond merely describing past events.