NOTE: This course has been retired, but please feel free to take the labs as exercises. Instead of taking this retired course, there is another option:
- Become a Microsoft Certified Professional by taking the DA-100 Analyzing Data with Microsoft Power BI exam. The online courses to prepare you for this exam can be found on Microsoft Learn. To facilitate you, I created a Microsoft Learn collection for the DA-100 exam. You can also use the corresponding GitHub DA-100 repo for this course.
Welcome to the Github Repo of the "A Practical Introduction to Data Analysis for Absolute Beginners" course!
Digital transformation and advanced technologies like AI and quantum computing are fueled by data. Every industry and profession needs data analysis, from a small business’s survey data to CERN’s hundreds of petabytes per experiment. Analyzing data is one of the most critical skills of the future. This course will bring you from the very beginnings of data concepts and structures in context, all the way through analyzing data, telling data stories effectively, and understanding the environments in which data exists throughout our work and life. It will also start you on the path to becoming a data analyst. Throughout the course, we’ll reference additional courses and learning paths you can take to help you on your data career journey.
Course audience: Aspiring analysts in any industry, as well as managers who need to learn data analytics, data scientists, engineers, software developers, AI engineers, and more.
This course has six modules.
Every module has videos, exercises and labs to practice your knowledge. You can find the labs and the data in the module folders. You can't take the knowledge checks anymore.
Module 1: Our Data-Driven World: Learn to look at the world through the lens of data and to understand things from a fundamental transactional and representational level, all the way through to data fluency and how organizations and governments, not to mention people, from around the world run and organize their life around the flow of data.
Module 2: Our First Data Walkthrough: Dive right in and run through a complete analysis of a real-world data set involving gas mileage, engine size, and other factors related to a group of car models. You'll also learn to make insights, explore scatterplots, break out one variable by another factor, and calculate correlations.
Module 3: Our Data Structures: Find out where data come from as well as how they are used, stored, and interpreted. You'll also explore the different types of data and learn how to join two data sets into a single table using different methodologies.
Module 4: Our Data Analysis Methods: You'll get into the specifics of how to use math and visualization techniques to summarize, distribute, and present data in a compelling way.
Module 5: Our Data Analysis in Context: Explore how data insights work in the real world and in the context of a couple specific industries. You'll also get a crash course in data ethics and the wide variety of possible careers in the field of data analysis.
Final Exam and Challenge Lab: Take a 20-question, multiple-choice Final Exam and complete one Challenge Lab.
- prerequisites
- lab setup
In this introductory lesson, we'll explore the increasingly important role of data analysis in modern life, society, and technology.
- Video: Data in Our Life
- Video: Data in Our Society
- Video: Data Analysis History
- Video: Dashboard Interaction Lab Introduction
- Lab: Dashboard Interaction
- Lab: Quiz
- Lesson 1: Assessment
In this lesson, we'll begin building our core data fluency skills: reading and speaking the language of analytics.
- Video: Data Fluency
- Video: Data Fluency Lab Introduction
- Lab: Data Fluency
- Lab: Quiz
- Lesson 2: Assessment
In this lesson, we'll dive into our first hands-on data analytics task. We'll analyze a data set involving cars and identify factors linked with better gas mileage.
- Video: Data Scenario Setup
- Video: The Data Analysis Process
- Video: Data Set Walkthrough
- Lab: Real-World Data
- Lab: Quiz
- Video: Unpacking the Walkthrough 1: Average
- Video: Unpacking the Walkthrough 2: Breaking Out
- Video: Unpacking the Walkthrough 3: Scatterplots
- Video: Unpacking the Walkthrough 4: Correlations
- Lab: Data Walkthrough
- Lab: Quiz
- Lesson 1: Assessment
In this short lesson, we'll discuss where data comes from, and where it ends up.
- Video: Where Data Comes From
- Video: Where Data Goes To
- Lesson 1: Assessment
In this lesson, we'll familiarize ourselves with the essential structure, anatomy, and storage of a data set. We'll also look at how data is categorized into different types, and how nearly anything that we can capture and store can be thought of (and utilized) as data.
- Video: Data Anatomy
- Video: Data Types
- Lab: Data Structures
- Lab: Quiz
- Video: Data Structures
- Lesson 2: Assessment
In this lesson, we'll learn how to combine multiple related data sets into a single table. We'll look at four different methodologies for doing this, depending on the specific needs of our project.
- Video: Data Joins
- Video: Example of Data Joins
- Lab: Data Joins
- Lab: Quiz
- Lesson 3: Assessment
In this lesson, we'll gain some basic math and statistical skills that will prove extremely useful in the field of data analysis. We'll look at summary statistics like the mean, median, and mode, as well as other statistics like skewness and correlations.
- Video: Summary Statistics
- Video: Distribution Statistics
- Video: Other Statistics
- Lab: Data and Math
- Lab: Quiz
- Lesson 1: Assessment
In this lesson, we'll explore various ways of visualizing our data via graphs, charts, dashboards, and more.
- Video: Data Visualizations: Purposes
- Video: Data Visualizations: Example
- Video: Data Visualizations: Types
- Video: Data Storytelling
- Lab: Data Visualization
- Lab: Quiz
- Lesson 2: Assessment
In this lesson, we'll examine the complex real-world ecosystems in which data shows up. Data doesn't exist in a vacuum!
- Video: Data in Context
- Video: Example: Healthcare
- Lab: Healthcare Data
- Lab: Quiz
- Video: Example: Education
- Lab: Education Data
- Lab: Quiz
- Lesson 1: Assessment
In this lesson, we'll examine the ethics and moral concerns of data analytics, this new frontier of the 21st century. How should we govern ourselves responsibly in this growing field?
- Video: Data Ethics
- Lab: Data Privacy
- Lab: Quiz
- Lesson 2: Assessment
In this very short lesson, we'll take a look at some of the jobs and career paths available to us as we grow our data analysis skillsets.
- Video: Data Careers
- Lesson 3: Assessment
The final exam exists of 20 multiple choice questions and a Challenge Lab.
- Final Exam
- Final Challenge Lab
- Lab: Quiz