The first step the analyst should perform with the data is to conduct an exploratory analysis and use descriptive statistics. Exploratory analysis is a type of analysis that aims to summarize the main characteristics of the data, identify patterns, outliers, and relationships, and generate hypotheses for further investigation. Descriptive statistics are numerical measures that describe the central tendency, variability, and distribution of the data, such as mean, median, mode, standard deviation, range, quartiles, etc. Exploratory analysis and descriptive statistics can help the analyst gain a betterunderstanding of the data and its quality, as well as prepare the data for further analysis.