Exploratory Data Analysis

Exploratory data analysis (EDA) is a data-driven conceptual framework for analysis that is based primarily on the philosophical and methodological work of John Tukey and colleagues, which dates back to the early 1960s. Tukey developed EDA in response to psychology's overemphasis on hypodeductive approaches to gaining insight into phenomena, whereby researchers focused almost exclusively on the hypothesis-driven techniques of confirmatory data analysis (CDA). EDA was not developed as a substitute for CDA; rather, its application is intended to satisfy a different stage of the research process. EDA is a bottom-up approach that focuses on the initial exploration of data; a broad range of methods are used to develop a deeper understanding of the data, generate new hypotheses, and identify patterns in the data. In contrast, ...