1.

FOUNDATIONS

What you will learn:

 Real-life roles and responsibilities of a junior data analyst
 How businesses transform data into actionable insights
 Spreadsheet basics
 Database and query basics
 Data visualization basics
Skill sets you will build:
 Using data in everyday life
 Thinking analytically
 Applying tools from the data analytics toolkit
 Showing trends and patterns with data visualizations
 Ensuring your data analysis is fair

2. ASK

What you will learn:

 How data analysts solve problems with data
 The use of analytics for making data-driven decisions
 Spreadsheet formulas and functions
 Dashboard basics, including an introduction to Tableau
 Data reporting basics
Skill sets you will build:
 Asking SMART and effective questions
 Structuring how you think
 Summarizing data
 Putting things into context
 3. PREPARE

What you will learn:

 How data is generated
 Features of different data types, fields, and values
 Database structures
 The function of metadata in data analytics
 Structured Query Language (SQL) functions
Skill sets you will build:
 Ensuring ethical data analysis practices
 Addressing issues of bias and credibility
 Accessing databases and importing data
 Writing simple queries

4.PROCESSES

What you will learn:

 Data integrity and the importance of clean data
 The tools and processes used by data analysts to clean data
 Data-cleaning verification and reports
 Statistics, hypothesis testing, and margin of error
 Resume building and interpretation of job postings (optional)
Skill sets you will build:
 Connecting business objectives to data analysis
 Identifying clean and dirty data
 Cleaning small datasets using spreadsheet tools
 Cleaning large datasets by writing SQL queries
5.ANALYZE

What you will learn:

 Steps data analysts take to organize data
 How to combine data from multiple sources
 Spreadsheet calculations and pivot tables
 SQL calculations
 Temporary tables
 Data validation
Skill sets you will build:
 Sorting data in spreadsheets and by writing SQL queries
 Filtering data in spreadsheets and by writing SQL queries
 Converting data
 Formatting data
 Substantiating data analysis processes
 Seeking feedback and support from others during data analysis

6.SHARE

What you will learn:

 Design thinking
 How data analysts use visualizations to communicate about data
 The benefits of Tableau for presenting data analysis findings
 Data-driven storytelling
 Dashboards and dashboard filters
 Strategies for creating an effective data presentation
Skill sets you will build:
 Creating visualizations and dashboards in Tableau
 Addressing accessibility issues when communicating about data
 Understanding the purpose of different business communication tools
 Telling a data-driven story
  Presenting to others about data
 Answering questions about data

7.ACT

What you will learn:

 Programming languages and environments
 R packages
 R functions, variables, data types, pipes, and vectors
 R data frames
 Bias and credibility in R
 R visualization tools
 R Markdown for documentation, creating structure, and emphasis
Skill sets you will build:
 Coding in R
 Writing functions in R
 Accessing data in R
 Cleaning data in R
 Generating data visualizations in R
 Reporting on data analysis to stakeholders

8. CAPSTONE

What you will learn:

 How a data analytics portfolio distinguishes you from other candidates
 Practical, real-world problem-solving
 Strategies for extracting insights from data
 Clear presentation of data findings
 Motivation and ability to take initiative
Skill sets you will build:
 Building a portfolio
 Increasing your employability
 Showcasing your data analytics knowledge, skill, and technical expertise
  Sharing your work during an interview
 Communicating your unique value proposition to a potential employer

n this activity, you will have a data conversation with someone you know. This can be in
person, over the phone, or in a video chat.

Choose someone in your life who uses data to make better decisions. This might be a
family member who runs a small business, a friend who leads a committee for the Parent
Teacher Association, or a neighbor who teaches piano lessons. All of these people turn to
data in some way to be more effective in their roles.

Let them know you're training to be a data analyst, and would like to have a chat about
data to practice your skills asking questions. By the end of this conversation, you'll end up
with some useful insights that will benefit both of you.

Plan for the conversation

First, decide who you will speak with and how they might use data. Your goal is to plan for
a successful conversation. Think about how much time you need and how you will use it.
For this step, review the following advice:

 Prioritize your questions: Prepare to ask the most important and interesting
questions first.
 Make your time count: Stay on subject during the conversation.
 Clarify your understanding: To avoid confusion, build in some time to
summarize answers to make sure you understood them correctly. This will go a long way
in helping you avoid mistakes. For example, in a conversation with a teacher, you might
check your understanding with a statement like, “Just to double check that I understand
what you’re saying correctly, you currently use test scores in the following ways…”
Depending on the field they are in, the person you chat with may not be comfortable
sharing detailed data with you. That's okay! Be sure to respect what they are willing to
share during your conversation.

Create questions

Now, come up with questions to help you understand their business goals, the type of
data they interact with, and any limitations of the data.

Use the SMART question framework to make sure each question you ask makes sense
based on their field. Each question should meet as many of the SMART criteria as possible.
 As a reminder, SMART questions are

 Specific: Questions are simple, significant, and focused on a single topic or a few
closely related ideas.
 Measurable: Questions can be quantified and assessed.
 Action-oriented: Questions encourage change.
 Relevant: Questions matter, are important, and have significance to the problem
you’re trying to solve.
 Time-bound: Questions specify the time to be studied.
For instance, if you have a conversation with someone who works in retail, you might lead
with questions like:

 Specific: Do you currently use data to drive decisions in your business? If so, what
kind(s) of data do you collect, and how do you use it?
 Measurable: Do you know what percentage of sales is from your top-selling products?
 Action-oriented: Are there business decisions or changes that you would make if you
had the right information? For example, if you had information about how umbrella sales
change with the weather, how would you use it?
 Relevant: How often do you review data from your business?
 Time-bound: Can you describe how data helped you make good decisions for your
store(s) this past year?
If you are having a conversation with a teacher, you might ask different questions, such
as:

 Specific: What kind of data do you use to build your lessons?

 Measurable: How well do student benchmark test scores correlate with their grades?
 Action-oriented: Do you share your data with other teachers to improve lessons?
 Relevant: Have you shared grading data with an entire class? If so, do students seem
to be more or less motivated, or about the same?
 Time-bound: In the last five years, how many times did you review data from previous
academic years?
If you are having a conversation with a small business owner of an ice cream shop, you
could ask:

 Specific: What data do you use to help with purchasing and inventory?
 Measurable: Can you order (rank) these factors from most to least influential on sales:
price, flavor, and time of year (season)?
 Action-oriented: Is there a single factor you need more data on so you can
potentially increase sales?
 Relevant: How do you advertise to or communicate with customers?
 Time-bound: What does your year-over-year sales growth look like for the last three
years?
Take good notes
 It is important to take good notes during your conversation. Your notes should be
comprehensive and useful. To help you capture meaningful notes, you should stick to a
process of asking a question, clarifying your understanding of their response, and then
briefly recording it in your notes.

Remember: If a question is worth asking, then the answer is worth recording. Commit
yourself to taking great notes during your conversation.

Helpful aspects of your conversation to note include:

 Facts: Write down any concrete piece of information, such as dates, times, names, and
other specifics.
 Context: Facts without context are useless. Note any relevant details that are needed
in order to understand the information you gather.
 Unknowns: Sometimes you may miss an important question during a conversation.
Make a note when this happens so you can figure out the answer later.
For example, if the previous SMART questions led the ice cream shop owner to propose a
project to analyze customer flavor preferences, your notes might appear something like
this:

 Project: Collect customer flavor preference data.

 Overall business goal: Use data to offer or create more popular flavors.
 Two data sources: Cash register receipts and completed customer surveys (email).
 Target completion date: Q2
 To do: Call back later and speak with the manager about the location of survey data.
The notes you will take will differ greatly based on the data conversation you have. The
important thing is that your notes are clear, organized, and concise.

Now you are ready to have a great conversation about data in real life.

Reflection

Before you begin your conversation about data, consider each of the above steps. Think
about potential candidates, brainstorm some SMART questions, and get an idea of the
information you want to record during your conversation. Then, reflect on your
conversation:

 What SMART questions did you ask? How did these questions tie into the field of the
person you chatted with?
 What insights did you discover during your conversation?
 How did the SMART framework help you arrive at your conclusions?
Now, write 2-3 sentences (40-60 words) in response to each of these questions.
 Action-oriented question: A question whose answers lead to change

Cloud: A place to keep data online, rather than a computer hard drive

Data analysis process: The six phases of ask, prepare, process, analyze, share, and
act whose purpose is to gain insights that drive informed decision-making

Data life cycle: The sequence of stages that data experiences, which include plan,
capture, manage, analyze, archive, and destroy

Leading question: A question that steers people toward a certain response

Measurable question: A question whose answers can be quantified and assessed

Problem types: The various problems that data analysts encounter, including
categorizing things, discovering connections, finding patterns, identifying themes, making
predictions, and spotting something unusual

Relevant question: A question that has significance to the problem to be solved

SMART methodology: A tool for determining a question’s effectiveness based on

whether it is specific, measurable, action-oriented, relevant, and time-bound

Specific question: A question that is simple, significant, and focused on a single topic
or a few closely related ideas

Structured thinking: The process of recognizing the current problem or situation,

organizing available information, revealing gaps and opportunities, and identifying options

Time-bound question: A question that specifies a timeframe to be studied

Unfair question: A question that makes assumptions or is difficult to answer honestly

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2. Module 2

3. Tools for visualizing data

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Tools for visualizing data

In this course, you’ll work with Tableau and spreadsheets. Both of these tools have
advantages and disadvantages Often, data analysts will discover they need to use multiple
tools, even on a single project. What you use will largely be determined by the work you’re
doing and your goals. This reading explores two of the tools you might use to visualize and
present data: spreadsheets and Tableau.
Spreadsheets
Google Workspace and Microsoft Office Suite both offer spreadsheet applications. You’ve
worked with Google Sheets in this course, and it’s very similar in function to Microsoft
Excel. If you want to compare some of the features of Sheets to Excel, check out the
Microsoft video Create a chart from start to finish.

Both Sheets and Excel are go-to choices for creating static charts and graphs. They offer
basic data visualization capabilities that are often enough for simple visualizations. In
addition, you can use them to clean, sort, and filter data. And both offer a range of chart
types, graphing tools, and pivot tables for creating effective data visualizations. These charts
are easy to manage; they update when the source data is updated, so they don’t require much
manual intervention once implemented.

Sheets and Excel are connected to other apps in their product suites. Google Docs and Slides
are very similar to Microsoft Word and Powerpoint, for example. You can incorporate data
visualizations from Sheets or Excel into reports and documents in Docs and Word.
Presentation programs such as Slides and Powerpoint allow you to create engaging
presentations that include data visualizations so you can share insights in a presentation
format. Learn more about the power of this interconnectivity among Google tools in the
article Link a chart, table, or slides to Google Docs or Slides.

Tableau
Tableau is used to create powerful and interactive visualizations, making it an excellent
choice for data visualizations such as live dashboards. Tableau also makes it easy to create
charts, graphs, and dashboards in a drag-and-drop interface. The application supports a wide
range of data sources and provides advanced analytics capabilities. These features allow for
in-depth exploration of data trends and patterns.

Tableau is particularly useful for creating visualizations using huge datasets, like in this
World Happiness Report by Sustainable Development Solutions which uses global reporting
data on different countries' happiness ratings. Likewise, this visualization of Population and
Housing State Data from 2020 United States Census Data compares population rates in the
United States and available housing.

Tableau is widely known and used for its versatility and power, but it can take quite a bit of
time to learn to use Tableau effectively. Soon, you’ll begin practicing with Tableau. But if
you’d like to check it out now, there is a free environment you can access at Tableau Public.

Key takeaways
There are many visualization tools you will have the opportunity to use as a data professional.
Different tools have different advantages and disadvantages. Although Tableau ultimately has
more power than a basic spreadsheet application, it’s most often used for specific cases and to
work with large datasets. Don’t underestimate how much you can do with spreadsheets or
how powerful interconnectivity between apps can be!

Most of the time, especially for something like a quick report, you’re more likely to reach
into your toolkit for your spreadsheet app of choice. But your data career will definitely
benefit from Tableau, so as you progress take advantage of opportunities to work with it.
With so many different data analysis situations, familiarity with all of these tools will help
you know which is the best for each situation.
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2. Module 2

3. Design compelling dashboards

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Design compelling dashboards

Dashboards are powerful visual tools that help you tell your data story. A dashboard is a tool
that monitors live, incoming data. It organizes information from multiple datasets into one
central location, offering huge time savings. Data analysts use dashboards to track, analyze,
and visualize data in order to answer questions and solve problems. For a basic idea of what
dashboards look like, refer to this article: “Real-world examples of business intelligence
dashboards.”

The beauty of dashboards

The following table summarizes the benefits of using a dashboard for both data analysts and
their stakeholders.
 Benefits For data analysts For stakeholders
Centralizati Share a single source of data with all Work with a comprehensive view of data, i
on stakeholders objectives, projects, processes, and more
Visualizatio Show and update live, incoming data in real
Spot changing trends and patterns more qui
n time*
Insightfuln Understand the story behind the numbers to
Pull relevant information from different datasets
ess track of goals and make data-driven decisio
Customizat Create custom views dedicated to a specific Drill down to more specific areas of special
ion person, project, or presentation of the data interest or concern
It’s important to remember that changed data is pulled into dashboards automatically only if
the data structure is the same. If the data structure changes, you have to update the dashboard
design before the data can update live.

Tableau
There are many different visualization tools available. One of the most powerful is Tableau,
which supports a range of data sources and has advanced analytics capabilities that allow for
in-depth exploration of data trends and patterns. Tableau can handle more data and larger
datasets than many other tools and offers real-time data availability.

It does take some time to learn to use Tableau, but your efforts can be well-rewarded, as
Tableau visualizations are pleasantly interactive. For a dashboard to be successful, it needs to
engage users and help them learn. Tableau has put in a lot of effort to ensure that its users
have a great experience and the platform is accessible to everyone.

Create a dashboard
Here’s a process you can follow to create a dashboard, whether in Tableau or another
visualization tool:

1. Identify the stakeholders who need to see the data and how they will
use it
Begin by asking effective questions. Check out this dashboard requirements gathering
worksheet to explore a wide range of good questions you can use to identify relevant
stakeholders and their data needs. This is a great resource to help guide you through this
process again and again.

2. Design the dashboard (what should be displayed)

Use these tips to help make your dashboard design clear and easy to follow:

 Use a clear header to label the information.

 Add short text descriptions to each visualization.
 Show the most important information at the top.
3. Create mockups if desired
A mockup is a simple draft of a visualization used for planning a dashboard and evaluating its
progress. This is optional, but a lot of data analysts like to sketch out their dashboards before
creating them.
 4. Select the visualizations
You have a lot of options here. Which visualizations you select depends on the data story you
are telling. If you need to show a change in values over time, line charts or bar graphs might
be the best choice. If your goal is to show how each part contributes to the whole amount
being reported, a pie or donut chart is probably a better choice.

Two pie charts show an even distribution of 4 parts of a whole. The first pie chart is more traditional,
appearing as a solid circle. The second pie chart is styled to show the same data in a doughnut
shape.

To learn more about choosing the right visualizations, check out Tableau’s galleries:

 For more samples of area charts, column charts, and other visualizations, visit the Tableau
Dashboard Showcase. This gallery is full of great examples that were created using real data;
explore this resource on your own to get some inspiration.
 Explore Tableau’s Viz of the Day to check out visualizations curated by the community.
These are visualizations created by Tableau users and are a great way to learn more about
how other data analysts are using data visualization tools.
5. Create filters as needed
Filters show certain data while hiding the rest of the data in a dashboard. This can be a big
help to identify patterns while keeping the original data intact. It’s common for data analysts
to use and share the same dashboard, but manage their part of it with a filter. To dig deeper
into filters and find an example of filters in action, visit Tableau’s page on Filter Actions.
This is a useful resource to save and come back to when you start practicing using filters in
Tableau on your own.

Key takeaways
Just like how the dashboard on an airplane shows the pilot their flight path, your dashboard
does the same for your stakeholders. It helps them navigate the path of a project inside the
data. If you add clear markers and highlight important points on your dashboard, users will
understand where your data story is headed. Then, you can work together to make sure the
business gets where it needs to go.

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2. Module 2

3. Self-Reflection: Go deeper into dashboards

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Self-Reflection: Go deeper into dashboards

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Self-Reflection: Go deeper into dashboards

Practice Quiz. • 20 min. • 2 total points available.2 total points
English
DueAug 19, 11:59 PM IST
 Activity Overview

Previously, you were introduced to the data management tool known as a dashboard. In this
self-reflection, you’ll examine different kinds of dashboards and consider how they are used
by data analysts and their employers.

As a refresher, a dashboard is a single point of access for managing a business's information.

It allows analysts to pull key information from data in a quick review by visualizing the data
in a way that makes findings easy to understand.

This self-reflection will help you develop insights into your own learning and prepare you to
connect your knowledge of dashboards to what you know about business needs. As you
answer questions—and come up with questions of your own—you will consider concepts,
practices, and principles to help refine your understanding and reinforce your learning.
You’ve done the hard work, so make sure to get the most out of it: This reflection will help
your knowledge stick!

Types of dashboards

For a refresher, consider the different types of dashboards a business may use. Often,
businesses will tailor a dashboard for a specific purpose. The three most common categories
are:

 Strategic: focuses on long term goals and strategies at the highest level of metrics
 Operational: short-term performance tracking and intermediate goals
 Analytical: consists of the datasets and the mathematics used in these sets
Strategic dashboards

A wide range of businesses use strategic dashboards when evaluating and aligning their
strategic goals. These dashboards provide information over the longest time frame—from a
single financial quarter to years.

They typically contain information that is useful for enterprise-wide decision-making. Below
is an example of a strategic dashboard which focuses on key performance indicators (KPIs)
over a year.
Operational dashboards

Operational dashboards are, arguably, the most common type of dashboard. Because these
dashboards contain information on a time scale of days, weeks, or months, they can provide
performance insight almost in real-time.

This allows businesses to track and maintain their immediate operational processes in light of
their strategic goals. The operational dashboard below focuses on customer service.
Resolutions are divided between first call resolution (61%) and unresolved calls (9%)

Analytical dashboards

Analytic dashboards contain a vast amount of data used by data analysts. These dashboards
contain the details involved in the usage, analysis, and predictions made by data scientists.

Certainly the most technical category, analytic dashboards are usually created and maintained
by data science teams and rarely shared with upper management as they can be very difficult
to understand. The analytic dashboard below focuses on metrics for a company’s financial
performance.
 Contains Return on assets, wrong capital ratio, and balance sheet

1.
Question 1

Reflection

Consider the different types of dashboards:

 How are the different types of dashboards similar to each other?

 In what ways do they differ?
Write 2-3 sentences (40-60 words) in response to each of these questions. Enter your response in the text
box below.

1 point

Your answer cannot be more than 10000 characters.

2.
Question 2

Now that you have considered the different types of dashboards, think about the impact that dashboards
can have on a company:

 What is an example of a data source a company might use with a dashboard?

 How would a company benefit from a dashboard that uses this data?
 What industries or businesses might benefit from using dashboards more than others?
Now, write 2-3 sentences (40-60 words) in response to each of these questions. Enter your response in the
text box below.

1 point

Your answer cannot be more than 10000 characters.

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2. Module 2

3. Big and small data

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Big and small data

As a data analyst, you will work with data both big and small. Both kinds of data are
valuable, but they play very different roles.

Whether you work with big or small data, you can use it to help stakeholders improve
business processes, answer questions, create new products, and much more. But there are
certain challenges and benefits that come with big data and the following table explores the
differences between big and small data.

Small data Big data

Describes a dataset made up of specific metrics Describes large, less-specific datasets that cover a long tim
 Small data Big data
over a short, well-defined time period
Usually organized and analyzed in spreadsheets Usually kept in a database and queried
Likely to be used by small and midsize businesses Likely to be used by large organizations
Simple to collect, store, manage, sort, and visually Takes a lot of effort to collect, store, manage, sort, and vi
represent represent
Usually needs to be broken into smaller pieces in order to
Usually already a manageable size for analysis
organized and analyzed effectively for decision-making
Challenges and benefits
Here are some challenges you might face when working with big data:

 A lot of organizations deal with data overload and way too much unimportant or irrelevant
information.
 Important data can be hidden deep down with all of the non-important data, which makes it
harder to find and use. This can lead to slower and more inefficient decision-making time
frames.
 The data you need isn’t always easily accessible.
 Current technology tools and solutions still struggle to provide measurable and reportable
data. This can lead to unfair algorithmic bias.
 There are gaps in many big data business solutions.
Now for the good news! Here are some benefits that come with big data:

 When large amounts of data can be stored and analyzed, it can help companies identify more
efficient ways of doing business and save a lot of time and money.
 Big data helps organizations spot the trends of customer buying patterns and satisfaction
levels, which can help them create new products and solutions that will make customers
happy.
 By analyzing big data, businesses get a much better understanding of current market
conditions, which can help them stay ahead of the competition.
 As in our earlier social media example, big data helps companies keep track of their online
presence—especially feedback, both good and bad, from customers. This gives them the
information they need to improve and protect their brand.
The three (or four) V words for big data
When thinking about the benefits and challenges of big data, it helps to think about the three
Vs: volume, variety, and velocity. Volume describes the amount of data. Variety
describes the different kinds of data. Velocity describes how fast the data can be processed.
Some data analysts also consider a fourth V: veracity. Veracity refers to the quality and
reliability of the data. These are all important considerations related to processing huge,
complex datasets.

Volume Variety Velocity Veracity

The amount of The different kinds of How fast the data can be The quality and reliability
data data processed data
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2. Module 3

3. Spreadsheets and the data life cycle

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Spreadsheets and the data life cycle

To better understand the benefits of using spreadsheets in data analytics, let’s explore how
they relate to each phase of the data life cycle: plan, capture, manage, analyze,
archive, and destroy.
 Plan for the users who will work within a spreadsheet by developing organizational
standards. This can mean formatting your cells, the headings you choose to highlight, the
color scheme, and the way you order your data points. When you take the time to set these
standards, you will improve communication, ensure consistency, and help people be more
efficient with their time.
 Capture data by the source by connecting spreadsheets to other data sources, such as an
online survey application or a database. This data will automatically be updated in the
spreadsheet. That way, the information is always as current and accurate as possible.
 Manage different kinds of data with a spreadsheet. This can involve storing, organizing,
filtering, and updating information. Spreadsheets also let you decide who can access the data,
how the information is shared, and how to keep your data safe and secure.
 Analyze data in a spreadsheet to help make better decisions. Some of the most common
spreadsheet analysis tools include formulas to aggregate data or create reports, and pivot
tables for clear, easy-to-understand visuals.
 Archive any spreadsheet that you don’t use often, but might need to reference later with
built-in tools. This is especially useful if you want to store historical data before it gets
updated.
 Destroy your spreadsheet when you are certain that you will never need it again, if you
have better backup copies, or for legal or security reasons. Keep in mind, lots of businesses
are required to follow certain rules or have measures in place to make sure data is destroyed
properly.
Resources for more information
Spreadsheet shortcuts can help you become more efficient with spreadsheets. If you’d like to
learn more, you can explore the collection of Google Sheets shortcuts, or visit the Microsoft
Excel shortcuts page if you are using Excel. Both of these resources contain a list of
spreadsheet shortcuts you can save and reference as you work more with spreadsheets on
your own.

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