Tools you should know as a Data Analyst

hey is it me or does it smell like updated nerd in here what up data nerd nothing much what's up with you Dad nerd oh hey that's an impressive graph You Got What tool are you using oh it's my new go-to all-in-one data analytics tool all in one no way yeah it actually does a lot it has the ability to make fancy calculations its own version control system it even has its own programming language built right into the app wow that's pretty impressive oh and the best part it has unlimited data storage all I have to do is add another slide a slide hold up is this Microsoft PowerPoint yeah so you're using a tool that was designed for mind-numbing presentations in order to make multi-million dollar data analytical decisions that ultimately decide the fate of our company and my job um yeah you know just when I thought you couldn't be any less nerdy you go and do something like this and totally redeem yourself yeah yeah never mind What I've Done nerds real Luke here and let's get in some tools that I use that I didn't really know of or even think that I'd have to use as a data analyst and spoil alert this won't really include PowerPoint okay this video does have a sponsor which is Coursera and I'll be sharing my recommendations from them along the way so for this we're going to be looking at tools on where they fall in the data Pipeline and what do I mean by a data pipeline well data has to come from some place and then go through a series of steps before it even ends in one of those mind-numbing PowerPoints so let's begin where it all starts in data collection when I started my first job I was a little naive I just assumed the data came in perfectly formatted tables that was easily searchable similar to what I had experienced in kaggle but I was rudely awakened now I worked in an industry that produced a product because of this we had multiple different teams that needed to work together for this we used an enterprise resource planning tool or an Erp tool this tool streamlined all of our processes to deliver a product and so therefore it had all of the data we needed the problem however was that this tool called sap P was something I've never used before I mean I just got done learning excel in SQL and now I had to learn yet another tool but what I found was that instead of having to become an expert like something like SQL and Excel I only needed to know enough to know the basics mainly I needed to know enough to be dangerous so with this tool I invested time over the course of a few weeks and learned this tool enough so that I could log on and navigate to The Source that I needed to download my data which inconveniently came in Excel but more on that later so for this job I was eventually able to streamline the process of getting the data if you're interested in learning more about this type of tool check out this fundamental course that provides some Basics behind it now this tool that I used was very industry specific so depending on where you work and what domain you're in you may have a different tool or even different tools if you're working in the tech industry you may have your own natively developed applications in order to access the data or if you're working in the e-commerce industry you may have to rely on web scraping whatever the random tool or tools are a wouldn't get deterred I've learned enough and then become dangerous with getting the data you need so where the heck do you put this data once you have it well let me tell you the wrong way that I may or may not have done sometimes when you pull data from a source they can give it to you in a somewhat inconvenient manner like the Excel file example I mentioned previously if you have to just do a one-off analysis this Excel file by itself is fine as the storage but in my case I needed to routinely collect this data in order to analyze it over time so I didn't really do a best practice and I use an Excel file to copy and paste all this data into the problem is Excel has a 1 million row limit and I ran into this so where should you look to store this data well one of the core skills of a data analyst is SQL which is a query language in order to access data inside of a database but you need a place to store these databases and that's where Cloud platforms come in they've provide in accessible locations for not only you but also your colleagues to access this data now you could store this database on something like a computer or even your company's servers but I've found from job posting data that this skill of work talking in the cloud is a growing skill for entry-level data analysts and interesting enough the skill only increases in demand as you progress in your career so which Cloud platform should you use well once again similar to those data collection tools it really depends on your company those that have taken the Google data analytics certificate actually have some experience in this field in that they use the Google Cloud platform to run SQL queries and I've used this platform as well but I'll be honest I still don't feel fully comfortable using this tool because of this I'm taking a course on it and plan to implement it in an upcoming project oh and I'm not saying that Google cloud is the best platform there actually seems to be a lot of good options out there such as AWS but realistically if you learn One Cloud platform it should be easy enough to switch over to another as well as they're very similar alright so now that we have our data stored what's next well just because you have access to data doesn't mean it's ready to analyze the next step is transforming it to your need and those core tools of a data analyst such as spreadsheets SQL Vis tools and programming languages really help prep you for this personally I'm a fan of something like SQL or python in order to clean the data or maybe even something like power query that can be used in power bi or Excel however the problem arises when you're trying to now share this data with your colleagues if you're working with less experienced data nerds they may not be as familiar with tools that have a steeper learning curve like python which in this case I find that these colleagues gravitate to more intuitive drag and drop type programs which embarrassingly enough to admit is somebody that codes these type of tools are convenient for automating data Transformations for this I've worked on teams that use tools like alteryx to combine and transform data from sources like sap and AWS and then provide clean data into Tableau to be visualized now I've also worked with hardcore data nerds and they've used a tool like Apache spark in order to manage their transformations in this case this tool is great at working at large amounts of data that a normal computer can handle is something Bernie sorry my model's training so with this type of tool it really depends on the experience level of the colleagues you work with but what I would recommend is if you're starting out to just focus on honing those skills of those core data analytical tools and then as you progress in your career I maybe consider something like the metadatabase engineering certificate this will help in best practices in understanding Transformations from an engineering perspective but now with these Advanced tools of spark and alteryx we're actually getting more into the realm of analyzing your data so earlier this year I re-interviewed some Google data analytics certificate holders that recently started their careers as data analysts in this Google certificate focuses on the four core skill sets of a data analyst specifically spreadsheets SQL a programming language and a vis tool even in my own analysis I've found that these are the core skill sets when I analyze skill requirements for job posting data from LinkedIn now I have found from these interviews that this skill set alone is enough to land you a job as an entry level data analyst I've experienced this similarly myself but the interesting thing that I found is once they landed their jobs they didn't just stop learning they actually continue to progress their skills further in becoming a better data analyst which directly relates to the sponsor of this video Coursera and more specifically Coursera plus which I personally use to access over 7 000 courses for improving my skills in all of these courses that I've previously mentioned in this video are included with this which I've linked below I use these courses not only for advancing my skills like what I'm doing now to learn more about the Google Cloud platform but also in refreshing my skills when I'm using a tool that I haven't implemented in a while it's also been great in helping me with skills indirectly for my job like a course I took recently on learning how to learn now Coursera is running a deal right now where you get a hundred dollars off the annual subscription to Coursera plus which is running from the 8th to the 29th of September the best part is they give you 14 days to try this annual subscription out if you don't like it you ask for a refund and no questions asked they refund you back one last note is that this is only available to new Coursera plus subscribers so fortunately in my case I'm not eligible for this but if you are eligible for this check out the link in my description below to sign all right to the last and final step in this is actually using these insights you found to make decisions in previous roles I've used analytics to help provide my bosses with Data Insights they need in order to make strategic business decisions and yes unfortunately I've had to share this through PowerPoint but one of my favorite use cases is that project that I keep talking about and analyzing skills for data analysts I like this project because it has a great use case I'm able to show my subscribers what the top skills are of a data analyst and I'm not just going off of this based on what my thoughts are on it instead I'm using real and actual data speaking of which this is the project that I plan to get back to soon and provide that data via the cloud to my subscribers alright so it can be overwhelming especially as a new data analyst when you see all these different tools in the data pipeline but I wouldn't be as I've found focusing on those core skills alone of a data analyst will put you in a good enough position to land your job then from there you can learn these new skills as you go this upskilling will then help you as you progress in your career as a data analyst as I talk about more in this video here alright as always you've got value out of this video smash that like button with that I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Luke Barousse

Views: 49,495

Keywords: data viz by luke, business intelligence, data science, bi, computer science, data nerd, data analyst, data scientist, how to, data project, data analytics, portfolio project, sql, excel, python, power bi, tableau, data engineer

Id: 0R1LCYpiQsw

Length: 9min 15sec (555 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 20 2022