Which of the following describes a characteristic of descriptive analytics?

Descriptive analytics is centered on summarizing and interpreting historical data to provide insights into what has happened in the past. This approach involves analyzing collected data to identify patterns, trends, and relationships that can inform decision-making. By summarizing past data, descriptive analytics helps organizations understand their performance, customer behaviors, or other significant metrics over a specific time frame.

This characteristic distinguishes descriptive analytics from other types of analytics. For instance, predictive analytics is primarily concerned with making future predictions based on previous patterns, while prescriptive analytics aims to recommend actions to achieve desired outcomes. Moreover, descriptive analytics does not necessarily require advanced machine learning algorithms, which are often associated with more complex predictive or prescriptive analytics tasks. Lastly, descriptive analytics does not focus on collecting new data but rather on analyzing the existing historical data to glean insights.