Start with the context

Data without context is like reading a book starting from the middle. Before diving into charts or spreadsheets, understanding the broader business landscape provides essential framing for any analysis. Context reveals which questions are worth asking and helps interpret what the numbers actually mean.^[1]

Some useful questions to ask to bring out the context include:

• What was the original hypothesis here?
• What was the insight that led us to choose this data?
• Why did we do this analysis, what were we hoping to achieve?
• What is the one key insight you see here?
• What other insights have we seen before on this topic?

For example, consider a retail company seeing a 20% drop in website traffic. Without context, this might trigger immediate panic and solutions like redesigning the website. However, context might reveal this decrease coincides with a strategic pivot to focus on higher-value customers or seasonal patterns that make this decrease expected and even healthy.

Establishing context first prevents the common mistake of finding patterns in data and retrofitting explanations afterward. It ensures your analysis connects to real business problems and keeps everyone on the same page.