Data analysis is defined as a process of cleaning, transforming, and modeling data to
discover useful information for business decision-making. The purpose of Data Analysis is
to extract useful information from data and taking the decision based upon the data
analysis.
Whenever we take any decision in our day-to-day life is by thinking about what happened
last time or what will happen by choosing that particular decision.
This is nothing but analyzing our past or future and making decisions based on it. For that,
we gather memories of our past or dreams of our future. So that is nothing but data
analysis. Now same thing analyst does for business purposes, is called Data Analysis.
What is Data Analytics?
At a mile-high view, Data Analytics is the process of gathering large amounts
of data from various sources and manipulating it to extract valuable insights
and make more informed decisions. This is done by scrubbing the data and
applying algorithmic processes to find patterns, trends, correlations, and
aberrations. The goal is to come with actionable conclusions to improve
business and organizational outcomes.
5 Essential Data Analyst Skills
To launch your career in data analysis, there are several skills to master and
data analysis tools to leverage.
Programming
The most common languages used in data analyst roles are R and Python.
These languages can be broken down into two categories: statistical and
scripting, based on whether compilation must occur before running. Other
useful languages include Java, SAS, MATLAB, SQL, Tensor flow, Scala, and
Julia.
Math
Data analyst jobs require basic math skills, specifically in statistics. While it’s
better to use a powerful scripting language like R for huge datasets, the
statistical capabilities of Microsoft Excel can handle smaller ones.
Data Processing Platforms
For large datasets, data analysts often use big data processing platforms like
Hadoop and Apache Spark. These frameworks enable data analysts to query
data across multiple devices, and scrub, model, and interpret it to gain more in-
depth insight into relationships and trends.
Visualization
Insights gleaned from data analysis are worthless unless they are presented
clearly, particularly for business-minded stakeholders. One of the most widely
used data visualization tools in Tableau. It enables data analysts to query data
stored in relational and cloud databases, spreadsheets, and online analytical
processing (OLAP) arrays to produce graphical representations of the findings.
Machine Learning
Automation is at the core of any large-scale data analysis. Machine Learning
(ML) enables computers to automatically learn and perform tasks without the
need for explicit programming. Data analysts need to know how to create,
apply, and train the most appropriate models and algorithms to datasets to find
solutions for specific problems.
Qualifications of a Data Analyst
Mastering a career in Data Analytics requires more than just technical know-
how. Other job-related skills those are valuable to have while on a data analyst
career path. Also known as soft skills, these skills are a part personality trait
and partly learned through experience
Communication
Not everyone in the organization can see what a data analyst who is
continuously heads-down in raw data can. That’s why analysts need to have
excellent communications and presentation skills to share results and explain
implications and potential business impacts.
Critical Thinking and Creativity
Successful data analysts should be able to analyze data objectively to be able
to come up with accurate evaluations. They must take a systematic and logical
approach to problem-solving. Being creative also helps to identify obscure
connections and troublesome inconsistencies to extract meaningful insight.
Think of these two qualifications like two sides of the same coin.
Team Player
While data analysis methods are largely solitary, the results of the work impact
the organization at every level. Data analysts need to be able to work with a
wide variety of teams to ensure that business objectives are met using the data-
based intelligence they bring to the table.
Master Tableau in Data Science with Real
life data analytics exercises
What you'll learn?
Create and use Groups
Understand the difference between Groups and Sets
Create and use Static Sets
Create and use Dynamic Sets
Combine Sets into more Sets
Use Sets as filters
Create Sets via Formulas
Control Sets with Parameters
Control Reference Lines with Parameters
Use multiple fields in the color property
Create highly interactive Dashboards
Develop an intrinsic understanding of how table calculations work
Use Quick Table calculations
Write your own Table calculations
Combine multiple layers of Table Calculations
Use Table Calculations as filters
Use trend lines to interrogate data
Perform Data Mining in Tableau
Create powerful storylines for presentation to Executives
Create powerful storylines for presentation to Executives
Understand Level Of Details
Implement Advanced Mapping Techniques
R Programming: Advanced Analytics in R
in Data Science
What you'll learn?
Perform Data Preparation in R
Identify missing records in data frames
Locate missing data in your data frames
Apply the Median Imputation method to replace missing records
Apply the Factual Analysis method to replace missing records
Understand how to use the which() function
Know how to reset the data frame index
Work with the gsub() and sub() functions for replacing strings
Explain why NA is a third type of logical constant
Deal with date-times in R
Convert date-times into POSIXct time format
Create, use, append, modify, rename, access and subset Lists in R
Understand when to use [] and when to use [[]] or the $ sign when
working with Lists
Create a time series plot in R
Understand how the Apply family of functions works
Recreate an apply statement with a for() loop
Use apply() when working with matrices
Use lapply() and sapply() when working with lists and vectors
Add your own functions into apply statements
Nest apply(), lapply() and sapply() functions within each other
Use the which.max() and which.min() functions
Why Python for Data Analysis?
For many people, the Python programming language has strong appeal. Since its first
appearance in 1991, Python has become one of the most popular interpreted programming
languages, along with Perl, Ruby, and others. Python and Ruby have become especially
popular since 2005 or so for building websites using their numerous web frameworks, like
Rails (Ruby) and Django (Python). Such languages are often called scripting languages, as
they can be used to quickly write small programs, or scripts to automate other tasks. I
don’t like the term “scripting language,” as it carries a connotation that they cannot be
used for building serious software. Among interpreted languages, for various historical
and cultural reasons, Python has devel‐ oped a large and active scientific computing and
data analysis community. In the last 10 years, Python has gone from a bleeding-edge or
“at your own risk” scientific computing language to one of the most important languages
for data science, machine learning, and general software development in academia and
industry.
For data analysis and interactive computing and data visualization, Python will inevitably
draw comparisons with other open source and commercial programming languages and
tools in wide use, such as R, MATLAB, SAS, Stata, and others. In recent years, Python’s
improved support for libraries (such as pandas and scikitlearn) has made it a popular
choice for data analysis tasks.
Combined with Python’s overall strength for general-purpose software
engineering, it is an excellent option as a primary language for building data
applications.
Use the IPython shell and Jupyter Notebool‹ for exploratory computing
Learn basic and advanced features in NumPy (Numerical Python)
Get started with data analysis tools in the pandas library
Use flexible tools to load, clean, transform, merge, and reshape data
Create informative visualizations with matplotlib
Apply the pandas groupby facility to slice, dice, and summarize datasets
Analyze and manipulate regular and irregular time series data
Learn how to solve real-world data analysis problems with thorough, detailed
examples