Looking for suggestions for online data analytics courses. Jobs I've been applying for have specified preferred skills including SQL (also on occasion Python, JSON, APIs, and others). I have fairly advanced skills in Excel, but would also like to brush up on VBA. I tried a free course but it did a poor job of explaining what you were doing and why you were doing it. Any suggestions? Free or paid doesn't matter.
The things that you can do in Python are not comparable to Excel. While I use R 90% of the time at work, I do occasionally use Excel -- but mainly as a data-entry app. I can't speak much for SQL (cause it's a pain to use) or Python (since I have used R for so long). However, if you are interested in R, I highly recommend R for Data Science and just about every other book by Hadley Wickham. The book, just like others by Wickham, is available online for free.
When you say analytics, what kind of work are you looking to do? Are you looking more at traditional data science or more of a data engineering type role? Data Engineering is more data management and software development centric (so more focused on APIs and Python) while data science focuses more on the actual data analysis (so more R heavy although Python still helps). Nonetheless the roles are quite distinct so you want to answer that question first.
To give you some context on roles I'm looking at, these are a few of the qualifications I've seen (various roles, not necessarily the same): ~Advanced Excel skills; SQL knowledge is a plus ~Expert user on Excel / Tableau and strong knowledge of SQL – experience leveraging big data sets to identify opportunities, drive strategic insights, and make recommendations ~Proficiency with Access, VBA, SQL tools, Matlab, or SAS a strong plus
Looks like you are looking at traditional data analyst roles. Python and R are probably not required for this type of job. While great to learn one or both for the future, getting some fundamental SQL knowledge is key. SQL is pretty simple once you get the hang of it. This is the book that I used 15 years ago when I first started learning SQL: SQL in 10 Minutes, Sams Teach Yourself (4th Edition) 4th Edition by Ben Forta (Author) I don't have any online course recommendations though. Tableau is Excel on steroids.
Those are entry level qualifications so my recommendation is to focus on the following: 1. SQL - Get some experience. Start by getting good at SELECT queries. You won't have to do any actual DB management at that level but you'll want to become decent at pulling data sets. You want to be a useful resource for the organization and people LOVE employees who can quickly pull data from SQL instances. 2. Excel is a given. Entry level data roles will use lots of Excel. Formula skills and good pivot tables are important. Same as above. Good Excel skills are valued by everyone. 3. Tableau experience is really marketable nowadays. its pretty simple to learn as well. if you're going to take a course, take a Tableau course (and get a Tableau certification if possible). SQL can be learned on your own (start with W3Schools if you have no experience with SQL) but Tableau requires a license to a Tableau server so you'll either need a company to provide that or you'll have to do some sort of training. 4. The stuff on the last line (Access, VBA and SAS) is largely losing traction. SAS is being killed by Python adoption in the industry. Access and VBA are older tools as well (good SQL skills is more useful).
Thanks, I started to W3Schools for SQL and so far so good. The roles aren't entry level, unless you're referring to the level of CS knowledge.
Yeah this is all relative. I used to work with very experienced data scientists so those were our entry level requirements but I forget that our requirements weren't the norm. So to your point, for most companies this isn't entry level.
Coursera has some great courses to get acquainted with whatever you're looking for. Here is a course focusing on Data Science with R which I thought was excellent: https://www.coursera.org/specializations/jhu-data-science?
