Cohort analysis helps Data Analysts understand how groups of users behave over time instead of hiding differences inside an overall average.

What is a cohort?

A cohort is a group sharing a meaningful starting condition, such as signup month, first purchase month or activation week.

Choose the cohort event carefully

The event should match the business question. If the question is retention after acquisition, cohort users by acquisition period rather than by an unrelated attribute.

Track behavior over time

Build a matrix showing cohort age against a metric such as retention, revenue or repeat purchase rate.

Watch for data-quality problems

Check duplicate users, changing definitions, incomplete periods and late-arriving events before interpreting the pattern.

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