Glossary · Analytics

Data Quality

The measure of data's fitness for its intended purpose in terms of accuracy, completeness, consistency, and timeliness.

Data quality refers to the condition of data based on factors like accuracy (correctly represents reality), completeness (no missing values where expected), consistency (same data doesn't conflict across systems), timeliness (data is up-to-date), validity (conforms to defined formats and rules), and uniqueness (no unintended duplicates). Poor data quality leads to incorrect analyses, flawed decisions, and wasted resources. Data quality management involves profiling (understanding current quality), cleansing (fixing issues), monitoring (detecting quality degradation), and prevention (implementing validation at data entry points). Modern data quality tools include Great Expectations, dbt tests, Soda, and Monte Carlo.

Fig — every answer ships with the tables, rows and SQL behind it.