I'm trying to come up with good ways to describe summarize vs cross tab to people with no data analytic background. Any help to kick-start my creative process would be greatly appreciated. When can a task be done with either and when is one tool the only option?
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In my mind the difference is whether you're manipulating existing columns or creating new columns from row data.
Summarize is about taking the 10 columns you have and aggregating these in some way (either counting them, summarizing them etc).
Cross-tab is different - it creates new columns based on row-data.
Animal | Weight |
Cat | 10 |
Dog | 20 |
Cat | 8 |
Cross-tab on that could be as below (where new columns are created from the rows)
Dog | Cat | |
AvgWeight | 20 | 9 |
Hope that helps @KaiLarsen
Sean
Well put. It was what I had written, but more to the point, so should help me hone the point.