throughout this bookthe data science process will be applied to bigger case studies and you'll get an idea of different possible research goals retrieving data the second step is to collect data you've stated in the project charter which data you need and where you can find it in this step you ensure that you can use the data in your programwhich means checking the existence ofqualityand access to the data data can also be delivered by third-party companies and takes many forms ranging from excel spreadsheets to different types of databases data preparation data collection is an error-prone processin this phase you enhance the quality of the data and prepare it for use in subsequent steps this phase consists of three subphasesdata cleansing removes false values from data source and inconsistencies across data sourcesdata integration enriches data sources by combining information from multiple data sourcesand data transformation ensures that the data is in suitable format for use in your models data exploration data exploration is concerned with building deeper understanding of your data you try to understand how variables interact with each otherthe distribution of the dataand whether there are outliers to achieve this you mainly use descriptive statisticsvisual techniquesand simple modeling this step often goes by the abbreviation edafor exploratory data analysis data modeling or model building in this phase you use modelsdomain knowledgeand insights about the data you found in the previous steps to answer the research question you select technique from the fields of statisticsmachine learningoperations researchand so on building model is an iterative process that involves selecting the variables for the modelexecuting the modeland model diagnostics presentation and automation finallyyou present the results to your business these results can take many formsranging from presentations to research reports sometimes you'll need to automate the execution of the process because the business will want to use the insights you gained in another project or enable an operational process to use the outcome from your model