A system and method including determining, for a specified target measure column of a first dataset including a plurality of records, the metadata of the first dataset, including a probability distribution for the specified target column and dimension scores for the dimensions for the first dataset conditioned on the specified target measure column, where the first dataset comprises a plurality of columns including the at least one target measure column and a plurality of non-numeric, dimension columns for the records of the first dataset; determining, for a subset of data of the first dataset based on one or more specified variables, dimension scores for the dimensions of the subset of data approximately derived from the determined metadata of the first dataset; and providing recommendations of top contributors based on the approximated dimension scores of dimensions of the subset of data.