Analytics Glossary

Browse 45 analytics terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

45 Analytics Terms

A/B testing
A controlled experiment where two variants (A and B) of a webpage, feature, or algorithm are shown to randomly split user groups to determine which performs...
AI Usage
The extent and pattern of how AI features or services are used, often measured in requests, users, tokens, tasks, or time saved. Tracking AI usage helps teams...
Anomaly Detection
Anomaly Detection is a detection approach that flags events, users, or systems that deviate from a learned baseline of normal behavior. Security teams use it...
Apache Iceberg
An open table format for large analytic datasets that brings ACID transactions, schema evolution, time travel, and partition evolution to data lakes. Works...
Behavioral Analysis
Behavioral Analysis is the inspection of user, process, or network behavior patterns to identify suspicious deviations and abuse. Security teams use it to...
Behavioral Detection
Security detection based on what software or users do rather than only on static signatures or known hashes. Behavioral detection helps identify novel threats...
Business Intelligence
The tools and practices used to analyze company data for operational, financial, and strategic decisions, often through dashboards, reports, and ad hoc...
Campaign
A coordinated set of messages, promotions, experiments, or automated actions grouped under a single marketing, product, or communications initiative in...
ClickHouse
A column-oriented database optimized for fast analytical queries over large datasets.
Cohort
A group of users or customers segmented by a shared characteristic, often start date or acquisition source, so their behavior can be analyzed over time. Cohort...
cohort analysis
A technique that groups users by a shared characteristic (typically signup date) and tracks their behavior over time. Instead of looking at aggregate metrics...
Cohort Analysis
Analyzing user behavior by grouping users who share a common starting characteristic (sign-up date, acquisition channel, plan type) and tracking their metrics...
column store
A database storage architecture that stores data by column rather than by row, enabling dramatic compression ratios and query performance for analytical...
Contributor Graph
A visualization or metric view showing who has contributed to a project and how activity is distributed over time. Contributor graphs are used to understand...
Conversion Funnel
The sequence of stages users move through from awareness to signup, purchase, or another desired action, with drop-off measured at each step. Funnel analysis...
correlation
A statistical measure (typically Pearson's r, ranging from -1 to +1) that quantifies the strength and direction of the linear relationship between two...
Correlation Rule
A detection rule that links multiple events, signals, or patterns together to identify behavior that would not be obvious from any single alert alone....
Data Lakehouse
An architecture that combines the cheap storage and flexibility of data lakes with the ACID transactions, schema enforcement, and performance of data...
data warehouse
A central repository of structured, cleaned, and organized data optimized for analytical queries and reporting. Unlike operational databases designed for fast...
dbt
Data Build Tool — a transformation framework that lets data analysts write modular SQL to transform raw data into analytics-ready tables. Models are...
Detection Logic
The specific conditions, correlations, thresholds, or behavioral patterns used to decide when security telemetry should produce an alert. Strong detection...
Device Fingerprinting
Device Fingerprinting is the identification of a device using stable characteristics such as software versions, hardware traits, or protocol behavior. Security...
DuckDB
An in-process analytical database (like SQLite for analytics) that runs columnar queries directly on Parquet, CSV, and JSON files without loading them into a...
Engagement Metric
A quantitative measure used to track how users interact with a product, such as sessions, messages sent, projects created, or time spent. The choice of...
Fingerprinting
Fingerprinting is the collection of distinctive characteristics to identify software, devices, browsers, or services with high confidence. Security teams use...
funnel
Funnel is a model used in product analytics and marketing that visualizes the stages users pass through from initial awareness to a desired action like making...
Funnel Metric
A metric tied to a specific stage or transition within a user or sales funnel, such as click-through, signup completion, qualified-opportunity rate, or...
Growth Metric
A metric used to track whether the business is expanding in the desired way, such as new users, retention, revenue, or engagement depth. Choosing the wrong...
IP Reputation
IP Reputation is the assessment of an IP address based on observed abuse history, trust signals, or network behavior. Security teams use it to enforce trust,...
Metrics Dashboard
A visual interface showing important business or product metrics in one place for monitoring and decision-making. Good dashboards support action; bad ones...
Operational Intelligence
The real-time use of operational data, telemetry, and context to improve decisions about system health, risk, and response. In security settings, operational...
Pattern Detection
The identification of recurring structures, sequences, or anomalies in data that indicate suspicious or meaningful behavior. In security, pattern detection is...
Predictive Security
The use of historical data, threat intelligence, behavioral patterns, and models to estimate where attacks or failures are likely to occur before they happen....
Product Analytics
The measurement and analysis of how users interact with a product, including events, funnels, retention, and behavioral patterns. Product analytics helps teams...
Product Metrics
Measurements used to assess how the product is performing, such as activation, retention, engagement, feature adoption, or user outcomes. Product metrics...
Propensity Model
A predictive model estimating how likely a user, lead, or customer is to take a specific action such as converting, churning, or upgrading. It is often used in...
Repository Insights
Metrics or dashboards that show repository activity, contribution patterns, issues, pull requests, and other operational signals. In team settings, repository...
Repository Stats
Quantitative information about a repository, such as stars, forks, commits, contributors, releases, or issue trends. In practice, repository stats are helpful...
Retention Cohort
A group of users or customers tracked over time to measure how many remain active or paying after a shared start period. Retention cohorts reveal whether...
Retention Curve
A graph showing how user or customer retention changes over time after signup or purchase. Teams study the shape of the retention curve to see whether the...
ROI
ROI, or Return on Investment, is a financial metric that measures the profitability of an investment by comparing the gain or loss relative to its cost,...
Role Mining
The analysis of existing permission assignments and usage patterns to discover candidate roles or simplify a role-based access control model. Role mining is...
Series
A one-dimensional labeled array in data libraries like pandas, capable of holding any data type and supporting vectorized operations, alignment by index, and...
User and Entity Behavior Analytics
A detection approach that models normal user or device behavior and alerts on meaningful deviations. It shows up in application security, identity,...
Window Function
A SQL function that performs a calculation across a set of rows related to the current row, without collapsing them into a single result (unlike GROUP BY)....

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