a. Descriptive:
This tells you what happened in the past. You will get the data from the past and report what happened with descriptive statistics. For example: Plotting the last 6 months sales, showing sales numbers are going up.
b. Diagnostic:
This tells you what is the reason for something happened in the past. You may need to look deeper, build hypotheses, and analyse data to identify reasons behind the patterns found in the descriptive stage.
Example: Why are business profit going down?
c. Predictive:
This tells you what can happen in the future. Analyzed based on past data and possible future factors you have to predict the future. Machine learning has great applications here.
Example: What can be the expected sales in the next month?
d. Prescriptive:
This tells you what to do achieve the desired outcome. You should study cause and effect relationships between independent and dependent variables to recommend what should be the ideal course of action.
Example: What are the things that you need to do to increase sales by 20% in next 6 months?
