Analytics

How to spell analytics

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce analytics

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does analytics mean?

1. nounThe systematic computational analysis of data or statistics, used to discover patterns and inform decisions.

Analytics in a sentence

• The marketing team relied on web analytics to track which pages performed best.

• Analytics revealed that most customers abandoned their carts at the payment step.

Where does analytics come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek analytika, a plural noun that Aristotle used as the title of his treatises on logical reasoning. The underlying verb was analyein, meaning 'to unloose' or 'to resolve something into its parts', formed from ana- 'throughout, up' and lyein 'to loosen'. The idea was that careful thought takes a complicated whole and unties it into its components, exactly what data analysis still does today. The term passed through Latin analytica and reached English in the late sixteenth century, at first as a name for the branch of logic concerned with rigorous demonstration. The modern commercial sense, the measurement and interpretation of data, took hold in the twentieth century and exploded with computing. A useful spelling cue is the 'lyt' core shared with 'analyse' and 'paralyse', all of which carry that Greek sense of loosening apart.

How the word is built

• ana- (throughout, up)
• lyt (from Greek lyein: to loosen, resolve)
• -ic (adjective suffix)
• -s (forming a field of study)