Some data analysis projects are fairly simple – you fetch some data that is in already clean and in good shape, run some exploratory analysis on it, and maybe run a model on it. Other projects are not so simple. They can involve a number of stages, from reading in raw data, cleaning it, to transforming it, perhaps plotting it, or running a model on it. Depending on how complex the project is, you could potentially end up spending more time managing the data pipeline for the project than actually deriving some sort of business value from its output. (more…)