they say data is the new oil but refining it is what makes it valuable data analysis learning data
analysis is one of the best things you can do if I could go back in time I would not do it and I'll
explain in a bit but if I had to learn it all over again this is exactly how I would do it I'll break
this video up into three parts mindset programming and data visualization and if you're not in
college or university great this video is for you it might be a bit more challenging but if you're
willing to put in the work you can definitely become a data analyst all by yourself in fact if
I could go back in time I don't know if I would have gone to University at all let's get into
it part one mindset data analysts and scientists just think differently we approach the world in a
more analytical way and I can honestly say that my day-to-day life has changed since I became a data
analyst data analyst data analyst from Southern America step 1.1 adopt an analytical mindset and
what I mean by this is that in every situation annoyance or issue you face in life there's an
optimal decision you can make you just need to find it whether it takes you one minute one hour
or one day if you're able to see the data in front of you you're able to make the best decision based
on that data and a lot of people ask me does being analytical mean you have to be good at
math no not at all if you're good at math you're probably analytical but if you're analytical you
don't have to necessarily be good at math being analytical simply means applying logical reasoning
to find out more about something it means asking the right questions to break down a problem to
its very essence and I'll give you an example of being analytical in the real world whenever
I need to make a big purchase like a TV washing machine or a car or whatever I always compare a
lot of different models I compare the cons and pros of each the quality the functionalities
and the price so I can eventually pick the best value for money that's being analytical and that
brings me to step 1.2 of the data mindset don't trust verify in my seven years of being a data
analyst I've had so many managers come up to me telling me my dashboard is wrong or the reports
are not correct while the data is 100% correct or even worse sometimes managers would come up to
me and ask me if I could leave just a little bit little part of the data set out of the data just
skew the data a little bit so it looks like we're doing better than we actually are and that day I
realized that if I don't verify the data myself I will never know if that data is actually telling
the truth and this applies to everything in your life from the ads you see on TV the articles you
read on the internet and what politicians are telling you about the economy they throw around
all these fancy terms and numbers but you gotta understand numbers don't lie people do so as a
data analyst don't trust verify and as soon as I internalized this fact I really started developing
my analytical thinking both in my professional journey and in my personal life part two learn
programming I can't say it won't be challenging but it will be absolutely worth it step 2.1 pick
your first tool well actually if you're absolutely new to data analytics you might actually want to
start with the fundamentals of data analysis first Step 2.0 get familiar with data analytics
and there is a really easy way to get started with the basics of data analysis that I only wish I had
when I started my journey there's a free course by IBM called the introduction to data analytics
it's hosted on Coursera a paid platform but they have a seven day free trial which is more than
enough to finish this course so if you're just starting out your journey into data analytics
this is a great way to start back to step 2.1 pick your first tool it's simple when you're
just starting out there's actually only two tools you really should consider Excel and SQL they're
both tools that can be used to extract data from data sources or queries to combine data and to
transform that same data simply put if I could go back in time this is the way I would approach
it if you already have a job but it's not data related then I would go for Excel because there's
a very big chance your company is already using itself maybe you're already using Excel Excel is a
perfect stepping stone into some basic programming data manipulation and even some data visualization
get good at it start using it in your day-to-day work get familiar with formulas like VLOOKUP
IF-statements SUMIF start using Pivot Tables and maybe even build some graphs in a report
or dashboard that you can use for yourself maybe your team or your manager and if you
don't have a job yet and you want to get straight into Data analysis then I would recommend picking
SQL first SQL is one of the simplest programming languages used to talk to databases basically
just writing simple code to extract combine and transform data next to Excel it is the second
most requested skill in data analysis jobs again a big thanks to Luke Barousse for coming up with
this graph a free resource to get good at Excel is excel-practice-online.com and and a great resource
to become a pro at SQL is learnsql.com it took me way too much time to learn SQL properly and
I underestimated how important SQL actually is to become a data analyst as I said it's the second
most requested skill for data analyst jobs so if you want to learn or practice SQL check out
learnsql.com they have a set of over 65 Hands-On SQL courses and it's a 100 online experience no
need to install anything on your device everything happens through your web browser all learnsql.com
courses are interactive and based on real life business scenarios meaning you'll be writing
SQL queries and seeing the results instantly learnsql.com reached out to me to ask if they
could sponsor this video but I only said yes after I took a look through the platform I checked out
their courses and realized this is exactly what I needed when I was starting my data analyst journey
so of course I'm going to recommend it to you plus they're letting me give away a great offer if you
click the link in the description and choose one of the learning paths in SQL PostgreSQL or T-SQL
the best way to learn programming is by doing once you've mastered your first tool it's time to get
into the more advanced data analytics step 2.2 pick your programming language and for this one
let me start straight with the resources ever wanted to say that you've studied at Harvard
Harvard studied at Harvard well now you can there are three data science courses that you can take
online from Harvard absolutely free and online but before you start with those courses I would
recommend picking one programming language and learning it deeply and it's really simple as a
data analyst you only have to choose between two programming languages R and python R is mainly
programming language focused on statistical analysis while python is a general purpose
language that happens to be very good for data analysis as well meaning if you get good
at python for data analysis it might open up the world for a lot of new job opportunities I would
recommend installing the Anaconda distribution for Python and then installing spider as your IDE or
integrated development environment for programming in Python to learn Python you can go to this free
website called learnpython.org where each lesson explains a basic concept after which you have to
apply this concept to the problem again learn by doing and once you know how to use Python you've
adopted this analytical mindset it's time for you to apply your data analysis skills to your
personal life step 2.3 create a personal project the first thing I would do is check out Reddit at
r/datasets to see if there are any interesting data sets for you to analyze although practice
data sets are fine to grow your skills you need some real life data to actually use it for your
personal projects another thing I would do is learn how to scrape data from the web yourself
you could start scraping data from job portal websites to analyze what kind of skills or tools
are most in demand for data analysts here's a nice article on how to get started scraping
data from the job platform indeed.com and here are nine other examples of personal projects you
could start yourself and once you get the hang of it these personal projects are the best way
to grow your data analysis skills while building your portfolio and actually building something
valuable for yourself all while getting a taste of what it's like working as a data analyst go
ahead pick a topic you're passionate about and ideally start a project where you get to
use all your skills and tools from web scraping data extraction and transformation with SQL data
analysis with python and then visualizing the data part 3 data visualization scraping transforming
and analyzing the data is one thing but conveying a message or telling a story with the data is a
whole other thing our brains don't really like numbers and statistics but we do like visuals and
stories and this is where the ability to create effective visualizations comes in showing that you
can create visualizations that are both effective and visually appealing will go a long way towards
impressing your potential employer step 3.1 pick your BI tool there are many business intelligence
tools to pick from as a data analyst but if I could go back in time I would only consider the
following two Power BI or Tableau Power BI is part of the Microsoft stack so it works
smoothly with Excel and SharePoint it has its own DAX programming language used to manipulate data
sets it's not the most user-friendly language but it does its job and there's a free version
of Power BI to use to grow your skills and Tableau is a BI tool with more extensive data
visualization capabilities than Power BI it also has a nice no coding intuitive drag and drop way
of doing business analysis and you can practice Tableau for free as well on public.tableau.com
for learning how to use both Tableau and Power BI I would recommend Datacamp there's free courses
you can do and also paid ones congrats by this point you're well on your way to becoming a
data analyst on how to actually land a job as a data analyst I would recommend checking out
my other video where I explain how you go from beginner to actually landing your first job as
a data analyst one last thing and this might sound strange I don't want you to subscribe to
my channel seriously as I said at the beginning of this video if I could go back in time I would
never have chosen to become a data analyst in the first place because it took me seven years
of working as a data analyst to realize that I don't want to work in an office for the rest of my
life I realized instead of climbing the corporate ladder I'd rather pursue my own creative endeavors
scratch that entrepreneurial itch I have I realized I want to achieve Personal Freedom
Location Freedom and Financial Freedom and learned that data analysis might not guarantee actually me
achieving that so if you want to learn more about data analysis and growing your data skills I would
recommend subscribing to Luke Barousse Ken Jee and Alex The Analyst instead of me they're probably
the most brilliant data YouTubers out there but if you want to learn how to create a life
of freedom Personal Freedom Location Freedom and Financial Freedom and you want to see my
journey of creating a life of Freedom where I share every single lesson I learn through
my YouTube videos then you might want to stick around and I'll see you in the next video cheers