Welcome!
The Novice Data Guide was designed to help collate all the different resources on the internet and structure it in a way that can be the most beneficial and easy to use for my users. Watch the video to the right to learn how to use this guide.
If you’d like a FREE 30 min mentoring session with me, sign up for the ignosis newsletter for a link to schedule time with myself.
Happy learning, and be good!
STEP 1
FREE
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On the left side you can see all the topics. Start from 'SQL Home' and go all the way to 'SQL Operators'.
Skip the following sections:
‘Insert Into’,
‘Update’,
‘Exists’,
‘Any, All’,
‘Select Into’,
‘Insert Into Select’,
and ‘Stored Procedures’This will give you a very strong base of SQL. Which is the main tool you'll use in data analytics to query data from a database.
At the bottom of the left-hand side menu there are examples, quizzes, and exercises that you should utilize to test your knowledge.
STEP 2
FREE
FREE
FREE
FREE(ish)
FREE
FREE
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A lot of folks, especially financial analysts and accountants have a pretty good handle on spreadsheets. Feel free to speed through this step and stop on sections that are newer to you, or if you need a refresher. Otherwise…
Go through the entire course. Even the formatting sections. Everything here is relevant. Presentation in data analytics is just as important as the analysis itself.
A lot of what you learn here is tranferable to other spreadsheet programs like Excel and Mac's Numbers. So you only need to take one, I advise Google Sheets since it's web based and you can run it on both Mac and Windows.
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Very basic overview of stats, you should learn this well enough because in interviews you may need to speak about it enough to show that you have a basic understanding.
Go through the following sections:
- Statistics Tutorial
- Descriptive Statistics
- Inferential Statistics
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Tableau is pretty much an industry standard in terms of data visualization. If you can learn this, you can learn any data visualization tool. It's good to show an employer that you know how to use this on top of doing visuals in Google Sheets.
Do note, only the first chapter of this course is for free, but it gets you through with creating your first visualization. This is enough to learn to then experiment more on your own, and Google specific “how-tos” to fine tune your skill. If you want more guided training, check out step 5.
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This is a more complete in-depth course on Tableau. You can complete the entire course for free if you enable the first month free offer and complete the course in a timely manner. This should be easy to do.
At the time of this writing, you can buy the standalone course for $29.99 or subscribe to LinkedIn learning for $19.99/mo.
Go for free if you can. I wouldn’t create a dummy account though. A completed course does grant you a certification, and you wouldn’t want that related on a dummy account.
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You'll see a lot of repeat from w3 Schools here, so you should be able to get through this quickly, but you should still go through it because Mode is another great visualization tool.
When interviewing you want to show employers you know more than one tool, Mode is just a great option, and a good free tool for you to use and practice with.
It will also be good to get familiar with Mode's resources for future reference.
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This is for you to learn how to use another visualization tool. Mode is A LOT quicker to use and implement versus Tableau. This is a great option to use during interviews if you need to create visuals or dashboards. Dashboards created within Mode can be shared publicly.
You may get a take home assessment during the interview process, using Mode will really set your submission apart compared to other applicants.
Data Visualization @ datacamp.com
Spreadsheet Basics @ w3schools.com
Stats Basics @ w3schools.com
SQL Revision @ mode.com
Data Visualization @ mode.com
STEP 3
Data Visualization @ linkedin.com
SQL Basics @ w3schools.com
STEP 6
STEP 4
STEP 7
STEP 5
Additional Resources: Statistics as a subject can be very dense. Going through the subject matter usually isn’t enough to gain a very solid understanding. I strongly recommend both of these videos to help supplement your understanding:
Teach me STATISTICS in half an hour! Seriously.
Statistics - A Full University Course on Data Science Basics
Additional Resources: Joins can be tricky to understand, if you had trouble understanding from w3 schools, here’s another resource to help you master the concept. They provide useful images and animations to help explain the concept more clearly: SQL Join Types Explained Visually
Sometimes having the entire lesson in one spot is much more convenient than jumping across the web for free content. So I wanted to offer some great paid courses that give incredible value. Udacity does a great job of providing high quality in depth courses. Here are some of the benefits:
Great course structure and pacing
Course mentor support
Learn by doing projects that you can keep and add to your portfolio
Completion certificate
There are three courses that I recommend, dependent on what your goals may be. See below for details.
All Inclusive Paid Courses w/ Udacity
Learn SQL
Marketing Analytics
Business Analytics
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This course will go in depth on how to write SQL queries to explore a database, but then will go further in depth and teach you about what does normalizing data mean, how to create and manipulate tables, improving table performance and introducing you to non-relational databases.
If you are looking to have an extremely solid understanding of SQL, this is the way to go. OR if you already are a Data Analyst and wish to get into Data Engineering or Analytics Engineering. This would be a great first step.
I would NOT recommend this course for “Data Adjacent” folks (i.e. those working in accounting, as a project manager etc). This course would be overkill for them, I would instead strongly suggest the Business Analytics course below.
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If you are more “Data Adjacent” and work as an Accountant, Project/Product Manager, or other fields that work closely with data. This would be a course I’d highly recommend.
The course covers a lot of the basics of SQL that you would need to be able to manipulate queries given to you, or do a decent amount of data investigation on your own.
On top of that, the course dives into utilizing spreadsheets to manipulate, analyze and visualize data.
A good amount of statistical information is also explored in this course, along with how to utilize Tableau.
A very well rounded course that can benefit multiple business functions.
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This course completely skips any SQL training. Because of that alone I recommend this course for business users who have data mostly supplied to them.
The course does do a great job of covering basic statistics and how to create visualizations with Tableau.
What sets this course apart from the other two courses is its focus on learning Google Analytics and zeroing in on marketing specific metrics and how to analyze them.
Would recommend this course to folks who may already be Data Analysts, but have pivoted to a marketing function, or for marketers who want to learn how to work and make decisions in a more data informed manner.