In this tech-driven era, education is entirely free. Ten years ago, when considering learning a skill, the first thought was its cost. And you calculated whether you could afford it. In my experience, when learning about computer basics, I paid $100. Truly, this amount was very high for me at the time. But now, you can learn rocket science entirely for free.
You can access all the information online and learn at your own pace. So, learning data analysis skills is similar. There are many ways you can learn data analysis skills for free. In my case, I learned 80% of my data analysis skills online for free. So, I think it would be a significant advantage for you. Because I have acquired data analysis skills for free, I can provide you with excellent guidance.
Before learning any skill, you must know why you want to learn that skill and what it entails. So, there are no exceptions to data analysis; we did not know these topics before.
What is Data Analysis?
A data analyst can be defined in many ways. But if I want to explain it very simply, a data analyst is someone who can easily make decisions from a bunch of data or turn data into action. For example, I work in data analysis at a local company. They have 5000 sales data. My company boss came to me and asked me to extract insights from this data that would target our old customers, and I would create offers for those who have bought more than 10 times from us. This is what I did with data analysis.
Well, if I ask you to look at this dataset and tell me what you actually understand, can you make any decisions from this data? No, you can’t make any decisions because you don’t understand anything from here. If I push you, you might say yes, I see some numbers here. But you can’t say what they actually are. However, when I analyze this data, bring out some insight, organize the data part by part, then you can easily tell what this data was for and what kind of action we can take from this data. I think you have no doubts about data analysis.
Which Skills are Needed for Professional Data Analysis?
As I have been working as a professional in this field for several years, I can analyze any type of data very easily. From my practical experience, I can now tell you which skills are most important for your data analysis.
Since we are discussing today how you can easily learn data analysis skills for free, I will suggest that you learn these skills in three stages. Like in the first stage, you will learn the basics and start working on some projects. Then you will learn some more skills to work at an advanced stage, and to work at the professional level, you need to learn some advanced tools along with programming.
Conquering data analysis can seem daunting, but with a strategic approach, you can acquire these valuable skills for free! Here’s a breakdown of the learning journey in three stages:
Learn Basic Data Analysis:
- Excel for Data analysis
- Google Sheets for data analysis.
- Google Looker Studio for Data Visualization.
When you start learning data analysis skills, you will firstly learn these three tools. You can learn these tools in a short time. Then you will understand all the data concepts. For that, you can work on live data projects. Projects help you understand data.
Learn Advanced Data Analysis:
When you finish basic data analysis skills, then you can add some skills which you upgrade advanced data analyst.
- PowerBI
- Python
At the advanced stage, you will start learning Power BI and Python to perform data analysis. Power BI is a very popular tool for data visualization, and the Python programming language gives you multifold performance in any task. Similarly, the Python programming language for data analysis will increase your work speed several times, and you will start working with big data. When you learn PowerBI and Python, you will do some projects on them. By doing this, the data concepts will start getting clear to you.
Learn Professional Data Analysis:
You are now familiar with many tools for basic and advanced data analysis. Now you can do your tasks at super-fast speed. But what you need to know to work at a professional level are:
- Statistics
- SQL
- Problem-Solving
- Critical thinking
As you progress, explore advanced data analysis tools like SQL for querying databases and data visualization libraries for creating impactful charts. Many free resources and tutorials are available online. I will write about it.
Data analysis is a dynamic field. Keep yourself updated with the latest trends and technologies by following industry blogs and attending free webinars or meetups.
Free Courses, Resources, and Videos for Learning Data Analysis
Technology is improving day by day, and there is nothing outside of learning to stay ahead in our technology. We have to keep learning. As we’re discussing how to learn data analysis for free today, if you’ve stayed with this article so far, apply these methods to any skill you’ll learn in the future.
Excel For Data Analysis: Data Analysis In Excel | Simplilearn
This Excel Data Analytics Full Course video will help you understand the various crucial functions available in Excel, such as lookup, H lookup, sumif/s, countif/s, if error, and others. Finally, you will see how to use the Data Analysis Toolpak to perform various data analysis operations. So, let’s begin.
Google Looker Studio: Google Data Studio Tutorial.
Learn how to use Looker Studio to create reports and dashboards. Looker Studio tutorial for beginners; you will learn how to create your first report, including adding a data source, adding and customizing charts, adjusting styling, and more. Let’s get started!
Data Visualization With Power BI: Great Learning.
Learn Data Visualization with Power BI from basics in this free online training. Great Learning offers a free course for learning PowerBI Data Visualization. This course offers you a free certificate. After completing this course, you can get a certificate. It’s really amazing.
Python for Data Analysis: Great Learning. Link.
Great Learning Offers you Python for Data Analysis course to advance your career in the in-demand field of data analysis. To do well in data analysis, you must learn a programming language. Python is a User-Friendly Language, so you can learn python easily.
SQL for Data Analysis: Chandoo.
SQL is one of the most important skills to have for data people. In this comprehensive video, learn how to use SQL to perform common data analysis tasks. If you don’t know anything about SQL, then you can learn it very easily by taking this course.
Statistics For Data Analysis: FreeCodeCamp.
This course introduces the various methods used to collect, organize, summarize, interpret, and reach conclusions about data. I think this course is very good for statistics. When I saw this course, I didn’t know about basic statistics, but now I know better.
Conclusion
Finally, I would say you can use online platforms for data analysis, and you can learn for free. But if you follow a mentor, then you can learn these skills very easily. If I speak for myself, it took me a while to learn these skills. But when I started teaching data analysis skills to my younger brother and I mentored him, he learned data analysis in half the time I did.