Your class plans a trip. Ms Okafor has a messy list: names in any order, some prices, some students who have not paid.

She needs three things. A tidy list. The total cost. How many students have paid.

She does not collect new data. She changes the data she has. That is called transforming data.

prices = [12.5, 5.0, 20.0, 8.0, 15.0]

print("Original:", prices)
prices.sort()
print("Sorted:", prices)

cheap = []
for price in prices:
    if price < 15:
        cheap.append(price)
print("Under 15:", cheap)

# Change 15 to 10 and run it again.

Manipulating data means changing how it looks or where it sits. You do not find out anything new.

You can sort a list. You can filter it to keep only some rows. You can join two lists into one, or change "5" typed as text into the number 5. The facts stay the same.

Analysing means looking at data to learn something new. You count, add up, and compare.

The total of the prices is one answer. The average is another. The percentage of students who paid is a third. Analysis turns many numbers into a few useful ones.