Your team has been asked to summarize and highlight patterns in historical purchasing data, identifying prior performance metrics and patterns. What type of analytics is most appropriate to apply for this need?

Descriptive analytics organises, summarises, and visualises historical data to show “what has happened”, revealing patterns, trends, and key performance metrics. Because the team’s mandate is to highlight patterns in past purchasing behaviour and summarise prior performance, descriptive (not predictive or diagnostic) analytics is the correct analytic category.

B. Predictive forecasts future events; requirement is retrospective.
C. Diagnostic explains why events occurred; task is only to summarise.
D. “Projective analytics” is not a standard CPMAI or academic category.

1. MIT OpenCourseWare 15.071 “Analytics Edge” Lecture 1 notes, pp. 3-4 (descriptive analytics definition & use).

2. Cognilytica CPMAI v7 Guide, Appendix B “Analytics Taxonomy”, Table B-1.

3. Davenport, T. & Harris, J. “Competing on Analytics”, Harvard Business School Press, ch. 2, pp. 19-21.