How Data Influences Decisions

As a beginner in data analysis, it's important to understand how numbers can tell a story and help people make decisions.

Rather than guessing or relying on opinions, organizations use data to make choices with confidence.
Even something simple, like calculating an average, can shape important decisions — such as improving services, launching new features, or adjusting pricing.

Let’s say a company collects customer ratings after a support call. If the average rating is low, the team might need to improve its service.

In this example, you’ll see how Python helps calculate that average and take action.

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# List of customer satisfaction scores (1 = poor, 5 = excellent)
ratings = [4, 5, 3, 2, 1, 5, 4]

# Calculate the average rating
average = sum(ratings) / len(ratings)

# Print the result and interpret it
print("Average Rating:", average)

if average < 3:
    print("Customer satisfaction is low. Investigate and improve!")
else:
    print("Customer satisfaction looks good.")

• ratings holds numbers that represent how happy customers were.
• We use sum() and len() to compute the average score.
• The if condition checks if the rating is too low — if it is, we print a warning.
• This is how basic math and simple logic help teams take action based on data.

You’ve now seen how data can directly influence decisions. In the next and final lesson of this chapter, you’ll take a short quiz to review everything you’ve learned so far.