Forbes Standards Practice Test

Descriptive analytics is about summarizing what has happened in the data. It turns raw numbers into clear descriptions of past events—using totals, averages, counts, distributions, and visualizations like charts and dashboards to show what occurred. This approach helps you see patterns and trends in historical data, such as last quarter’s sales totals or the most common customer behaviors.

It doesn’t try to forecast the future—that’s predictive analytics. It doesn’t explain why something happened—that’s diagnostic or causal analytics. And it doesn’t decide what actions to take—that’s prescriptive analytics. By focusing on describing past outcomes, descriptive analytics answers what happened in the data.