A Beginner’s Guide: What is Data Analysis?
Hi lovely 🥰
Thank you for clicking on the link that brought you here. First, I’d like to assume you’re someone who has interest in the field of Data and want to gather as much information as possible to guide your next step. In this article (I’d keep it short, detailed and interesting 😉), I’d walk you through the tiny details of Data analysis and what you should expect before launching your career. Even if you’re in the field already, more insights won’t do any harm, so come with me 💃
Introduction
“Technology” and “Data", there’s something very common between these two terms and I’d term it ‘Solution’. One major reason companies are relying on technology and data is to provide solutions to most of their challenges. There’s a saying that ‘data is the new oil’. Companies are now relying on their data to dig deeper and find insights that will help them optimize their operations, boost revenue, lead in the competitors' race amongst so many other solutions.
Data and Data Analysis
Data in its literal term means “raw facts", “unprocessed information”.
Illustration #1: Think of yourself as a college lecturer who takes attendance of students after each lecture. The details you’re collecting from time to time makes up ‘data’. Let’s assume you have 5 registered students and had 5 lectures with them (that is a total of 5 attendances).
If you decide to scan through the attendance you’ve collected to determine:
- The number of students who attended classes for each lecture you had.
- The number of students who skipped classes.
- The number of students who attended every class.
- The number of students who skipped every class.
With these numbers from your inspection, you’d be able to better understand the pattern in class attendance. If you decide to award the most consistent students in your class and decide that the metric is to consider those who were present all through, you can check for the names that were marked across all the attendances collected and present their awards to them.
The process of inspecting, exploring and digging deeper into your data in search of valuable insights is Data analysis.
With the illustration above and your involvement, you have successfully performed data analysis.
Data Analysis vs Data Analytics: is there a difference?
Yes! There is a difference between both terms (not much I’d say since the end goals are closely aligned). Think of Data Analysis as a subset of Data Analytics. Data Analytics is a more encompassing term (includes but not limited to the use of tools, techniques and processes for data collection, data preprocessing, DATA ANALYSIS, modelling, visualization, predictive analytics and reporting).
Illustration #2: Assume you have collected data on how much money you spend each day for a 30-day period stored in an Excel sheet. If you decide to explore the data to extract useful insights, that’s data analysis. The process of extracting that insight won’t be a one-way process as you could chose to preprocess your data, analyze and even visualize it. The entire process from start to finish is what Data Analytics entails.
Roles of a Data Analyst
As a data analyst working in a company/organization, your major role is to help get valuable insights from the data available that will help with strategic decision-making and growth. Your responsibilities will include the following:
- Gathering data from different sources
- Data cleaning and transformation for analysis
- Analysis and storytelling with data
- Communication and presentation of insights to relevant stakeholders
- Involvement in teams setup for data and data processes
…and so much more! (you’d definitely find these responsibilities interesting 😉)
Tools used by Data Analysts
As a data professional (doesn’t matter whether you’re an enthusiast, a newbie or still aspiring), you’d work with a couple of tools that make your work easy.
- Spreadsheet packages (Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets)
- Business Intelligence (Tableau, Power BI)
- Programming languages (Python, R)
- SQL Databases (MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, Bigquery, PostgreSQL)
It’s essential you familiarize yourself with at least one tool from each category. Incase you’re asking if you have to learn how to use all, the simple answer is NO.
Reason: a tool is just a means to an end. As long as you can solve your problem with one tool (e.g., Excel), not knowing how to work with Google Sheet is definitely not an issue. And in some cases, your ability to use one tool increases the likelihood that you would do well with the other. A typical example is with Excel and Google sheet, both are spreadsheet tools with similar interfaces.
Let’s proceed ✍
Salary Range for Data Analysts
The earnings of data analysts differ from company to company with region having a huge influence on it.
Illustration #3: The salary of data analyst A who works in company X in the United States will be different from the salary of data analyst B who works in the same company located in Nigeria.
On average, for countries in Europe, the average data analyst salary can go from €20,000 to €50,000 for entry-level analysts.
In Nigeria, on average, it’s between N1.5m to N3m annually for entry-level analysts.
Areas Data Analysts can explore in the future
As a data analyst (data professional), your career is expected to grow as you progress. At any point in the future, you can explore career paths in:
- Data Science
- Data Engineering
- Business Intelligence
- Database Administration
- Analytics Engineering
- Market Research and Operations
…etc.
Your background in Data Analysis will make the switch quite easier (doesn’t mean you’d find them very easy, but when compared to newbies in the field of data).
In conclusion, I hope you gained one or two. Hope what you learnt propels you to kickstart your career without procrastinating it further.
I appreciate your time 🥰🙏
You can share, give me a follow, send me a message on X/LinkedIn. Leave your questions or thoughts in the comments section 👇
See you next week when I drop the next article where I’d be sharing a learning ROADMAP for every starter for the year in view (2024) ✍
