DATA ANALYSIS & MODELLING COURSE

Let’s get introduced to your instructor - Méabh Grogan, Lead Data Analyst at one of the UK’s top 5 fintech companies.

• Course structure 
• Assignment structure & due dates
• Housekeeping

Get set up with the foundational knowledge you need to start off strong! Explore how, when and why data analysts work within a company and the core skills you’ll need to excel in your role. 

• Role of the data analyst & example tasks
• Core skills required from data analysts including SQL, critical thinking & stakeholder management
• Fundamentals of data analysis
• Tool setup and assistance

Deep drive into relational databases and the foundational knowledge you’ll need to learn and implement SQL. Learn key terminology and explore the relationships between tables in RDMS. 

• Terminology and data types
• Structure of tables in relational DB
• Primary vs Foreign keys
• Types of joins
• Normalisation 

Assignment #1: Quiz

Learn to communicate in a whole new way with SQL. Grasp the basics and get hands-on experience practising simple queries with sample datasets.

• What is SQL?
• What is SQL used for?
• Basics
• Aggregations
• DML vs DDL

Continue your exploration of the key functions of SQL. Learn to join data from different datasets, get hands-on experience of more intermediate level SQL, and get familiar with formatting best practices. 

• Joins
• Union
• Handling NULLS caused by joins
• Timestamp handling
• Subqueries & CTEs
• Formatting best practices

Assignment #2: Solving basic SQL problems

Rise up to the next level as you continue the conversation with SQL. Learn more advanced functions, understand how to optimise queries for large datasets - and learn to write efficient and elegant SQL, every time. 

• Logical operators
• Window functions
• Optimisation of large data sets
• Common Table Expressions
• Common mistakes

Assignment #3: Solving more complex SQL problems

Test, test, test. Get to grips with the importance of testing your results and practice problem solving skills. Understand how to develop a process for root cause analysis and learn key techniques for testing and sanity checking data. 

• Testing Queries
• Explore trends in data
• Workshop: Performing RCA analyses in groups, before working through the analyses in class. 

Assignment #4: Debug given SQL queries

Use Python to manipulate and visualise data from multiple sources. Get creative by using the appropriate visualisations to display results, and start to dive deeper into trend root causes. 

• Common libraries
• Manipulation using dataframes
• Visualisation using Python

Assignment #5: SQL and Python Use

Navigate a new path as you start to explore statistics. Grasp the fundamentals of the common statistical methods that are used in data analysis. 

• Understanding descriptive statistics
• Sampling & inferential statistics
• Hypothesis testing

Soften things up and take a 360 look at the role of a data analyst. Explore the career skills you’ll need including stakeholder management, prioritisation and critical thinking.Get familiar with key and supporting metrics - and understand how to design for each. 

• Understanding the role of the data analyst
• Key & supporting metrics design
• Critical thinking
• Stakeholder management
• Prioritisation 

Assignment #6: Exercise in key & supporting metrics design.

When you’ve worked hard to get your data, you need to make sure you do it justice. Deep dive into dashboard design with an extensive overview of the most commonly used tools. Get confident about planning for the purpose of a dashboard, and appreciate the importance of knowing your audience. 

• Dashboarding tools
• Planning a dashboard
• Dashboard design
• Selecting the appropriate visualisation
• How to speed up slow dashboards

Deepen your dashboard knowledge and get familiar with good dashboard design practices. Build storytelling and presentation skills with a focus on the role of readability, and the importance of aesthetics.

• Readability of dashboards
• Dashboard aesthetics
• Storytelling with dashboards
• Presentation

Assignment #7: Design and build a dashboard

Time to put your newly acquired skills to the test. Take part in tasks typical to those encountered in the real world by data analysts. Incorporate concepts and tools learnt throughout the course.

• Understand the problem
• Metric design
• Data discovery
• Data manipulation
• Dashboard design
• Dashboard build
• Deep Dive & RCA
• Dashboard Presentation Techniques

Assignment #8: Final Assignment