What Data You Analyzed – KDnuggets Poll Results and Trends

Over 600 readers voted in latest KDnuggets Poll asked:

What data types you analyzed in the past 12 months?

Here are the highlights:

• Table, Text, and Time Series remained the most popular types of data used
• the usage of image/video is surging (186% up)
• anonymized data use is growing in US, Canada, and Europe (but not in Asia)
• JSON usage is up, replacing XML (whose usage is down)
• Itemsets/transaction analysis is down 20% (the association rule algoritms replaced by more complex analysis)
• web log data analysis is declining - perhaps because large sites are relying more on Google Analytics.

Fig. 1: Data Types Analyzed, 2017

The most popular data types analyzed in 2017 were

1. Table data (fixed n. columns), 69.8%, first place, as in the past polls
2. Text, 46.4% - moved to 2nd place compared to 2014
3. Time series, 45.6%, dropped to 3rd place
4. JSON, 25.5%, up from 7th place
5. Anonymized data, 22.8%, up from 10th place
6. Location/geo, 22.6%,

Comparing with a similar 2014 KDnuggets Poll: Data Types/Sources Analyzed, we see the largest increases in share of responses for

• Images / video, from 4.9% to 14.1%, 186% up
• Anonymized data, from 14.0% to 22.8%, 63% up
• Other, from 7.2% to 11.2%, 56% up
• JSON, from 17.0% to 25.5%, 50% up
• Location/geo, from 19.7% to 22.6%, 14.9% up

The biggest decreases, compared to 2014 poll were for

• Itemsets / transactions, from 26.5% to 20.1%, 24% down
• Web clickstream/web log, from 12.5% to 10.0%, 20% down
• Twitter, from 17.8% to 14.7%, 17% down
• XML, from 14% to 12%, 14% down
• Table data (fixed n. columns), from 76.9% to 69.8%, 9.3% down

Fig. 2: Data Types Analyzed, 2017 vs 2014

Regional distribution of 632 voters

• US/Canada, 36.6%
• Europe, 34.2%
• Asia, 17.4%
• Africa/Middle East, 4.4%
• Latin America, 4.3%
• Australia/NZ, 3.2%

Next, we compared the share of top 3 most popular data types, and also anonymized data and Image/video across 3 largest regions.


Fig. 3: Popular Data Types Analyzed by region, 2017

Some observations:

• US data analysts use tabular data the most;
• text usage is similar across regions;
• Asian data analysts use much less anonymized data, but slightly lead in image/video data analysis.