have been a guest on nairaland for long and have been active reading threads here in the programming section, here i will be discussing my data analytics journey and the resources I took to become a data analyst..tho still a newbie because all I have is my personal projects on github(no real life job yet) hoping to get one soon..I hope this long thread won't bore you, because aside sharing my journey/resources with you all, I'm using this opportunity to test my writing skills too
so let's get started:

My journey into programming started when I was 19yrs, still in school then, I started with web development, learning html, css, was on javascript when my laptop crashed(on low budget laptop then)...lol I wish it didn't, probably I would have become a guru now in programming.. 😂😂...so I took a break from it, started losing interest in programming as school workloads pile on until late 2022, when I come across the nairaland thread: chronicles of a data analyst by Mr. Ejiod... reading the thread back then ignite my interest back into programming
so I had to use my nysc allawee savings to get another low budget laptop (hoping to get a new one when I get my first job, (I'm open to any laptop giveaway tho😜)...

...but before I continue I will like to give appreciation to Mr.ejiod and all other guys that contributed to the thread, and outside the thread too, in other programming sections I will like to appreciate people whose consistent encouragement to newbies have been helpful, tho sometimes when they communicate in their programming language, I find it difficult to understand lol..
guys like airsaylongcome, tensansegquet(no vex oo, the spelling get as e be) qtguru(recently joined twitter, and you've got a follower and sending you a connection soon in LinkedIn),
greatigboman, realsaghul, and devdevdev(lol..not someone you all like, but her confidence is attractive) and some other guys too(can't just mention all), y'all have been helpful..cos sometimes when I got frustrated, thinking about quitting, facing laptop issues (queries taking a long time to load) all I need to do is come online and read y'all posts.

so I started my data analytics journey in August last year with excel, tho, I have the basics understanding of excel so I just had to learn the advance stuffs(lookup, pivot table,macros, conditional formatting and even linear progression) and it took me 2months(4hrs a daily) to know all these despite knowing the basics(so don't fall for you can learn excel in 2weeks stuff) what they actually mean is you can watch excel videos in two weeks😂...you need to know how to use excel to clean and organize data, perform Analysis and creates dashboards.
then I move on to SQL and when it comes down to choosing a flavor, found myself using postgresql ( nothing influences my choice tho, just chose it) other databases are as good as it is...it took me less than 1month to learn this(surprised?? don't be) you can never finish learning SQL, still learning till now, so what I learnt in less than a month is just the syntaxs..but it takes years to master the syntax...
so it took me 4months to move on with my journey, during those 4months was busy solving problems on hackathon, doing projects with sql(kaggle and github are your best friend for this) jumping on challenges like danny's ma dinner: Still on it, the challenge hard nho be play😂😂(but if you are sincere with yourself and don't copy other people's code, you will surely find yourself confident using sql after the challenge).

so I moved on to data visualization with tableau, started learning this february this year, and it was quite easy since it's just drag and drop...while learning tableau in February, enrolled for the Google data analytics certification on coursera, so i started another journey, my previous knowledge makes the journey easy and fast because I had the opportunity to skip so many things.
the Google data analytics is a course that prepares you for a role as a junior data analyst and it's just $39 per course (8courses) but you can actually apply for financial aid (that's what I did, it takes 15days for them to approve it)..so in this six months journey, you will learn (googlesheet, big query, tableau and R) I was actually looking forward to the R part..but this course can be frustrating if you had no prior knowledge of data analytics, cos they will bore you with their long talks😂.. but it's actually worth it... recently finished the course and still on the capstone project.. looking forward to share the project here with you all..
Visualizing with R's ggplot2 is so cool that I started losing interest in tableau (probably because I like coding tho) because I felt same way with excel too when I started cleaning and analysing my data with postgresql..and with Rpostgresql you can access your database from R(cool right), at this point I felt no need for excel...bit good to have it, cos I don't know what the real life project might look like..
so this is how I became a junior data analyst (looking for experience to compliment this tho)

so to the resources I used:
for Excel:
1. mike girvin, excel is fun -- youtube
2. Excel crash course by start tech academy --udemy
these guys here are really cool(esp then start tech academy guy, you can't go wrong with him)

POSTGRESQL
1. start tech academy - sql for data analytics--udemy
2. Practical SQL : a beginner guides to story telling by Anthony Debarros.(highly recommended) it's a pdf, even if you are not someone who enjoys reading just like me, just try and go through this and I promise you will fall in love with it, it has almost everything you need to know about postgresql..

TABLEAU
1. intellipat's video on youtube (if you don't mind the Indian accent)
2. google data analytics(if you have not enrolled for it yet, there is a guy that uploaded this course on youtube)but I think he shouldn't have tho..that's bad business for google..lol

R
1.Google data analytics - coursera
2. R for data science pdf

COMMUNITY
Nairaland programming section.

other tools learnt through Google data analytics :
googlesheet
big query

DataAlchemist:
...but before I continue I will like to give appreciation to Mr.ej.iod and all other guys that contributed to the thread, and outside the thread too, in other programming sections I will like to appreciate people whose consistent encouragement to newbies have been helpful, tho sometimes when they communicate in their programming language, I find it difficult to understand lol..
guys like airsaylongcome, tenseguet(no vex oo, the spelling get as e be) qt.guru(recently joined twitter, and you've got a follower and sending you a connection soon in LinkedIn),
great.igboman, real.saghul, and dev.dev.dev(lol..not someone you all like, but her confidence is attractive) and some other guys too(can't just mention all), y'all have been helpful..cos sometimes when I got frustrated, thinking about quitting, facing laptop issues (queries taking a long time to load) all I need to do is come online and read y'all posts.

Not going to lie yeah, it takes a different level of self discipline to push beyond the challenges. I’ve come face to face with some kind IT challenges and I ask myself “WTF am I doing here?!?!” But if I go and lay down in bed my mind will be buzzing trying to find a solution. Last week I was doing some rough wuruwuru coding and did not go to sleep until 5am! The delight you get from overcoming the challenge is indescribable. Keep pushing, keep learning. Sky is the limit

airsaylongcome:


Not going to lie yeah, it takes a different level of self discipline to push beyond the challenges. I’ve come face to face with some kind IT challenges and I ask myself “WTF am I doing here?!?!” But if I go and lay down in bed my mind will be buzzing trying to find a solution. Last week I was doing some rough wuruwuru coding and did not go to sleep until 5am! The delight you get from overcoming the challenge is indescribable. Keep pushing, keep learning. Sky is the limit

thank you boss, these are the kind of posts that has kept me moving... At the bolded, even as a newbie have faced such situations lot of times, but nothing good comes easy tho, and it's surprising that despite your years of experience you still find your self in such situations, lol..I need to buckle up tho

DataAlchemist:
so I moved on to data visualization with tableau, started learning this february this year, and it was quite easy since it's just drag and drop...while learning tableau in February, enrolled for the Google data analytics certification on coursera, so i started another journey, my previous knowledge makes the journey easy and fast because I had the opportunity to skip so many things.
the Google data analytics is a course that prepares you for a role as a junior data analyst and it's just $39 per course (8courses) but you can actually apply for financial aid (that's what I did, it takes 15days for them to approve it)..so in this six months journey, you will learn (googlesheet, big query, tableau and R) I was actually looking forward to the R part..but this course can be frustrating if you had no prior knowledge of data analytics, cos they will bore you with their long talks😂.. but it's actually worth it... recently finished the course and still on the capstone project.. looking forward to share the project here with you all..
Visualizing with R's ggplot2 is so cool that I started losing interest in tableau (probably because I like coding tho) because I felt same way with excel too when I started cleaning and analysing my data with postgresql..and with Rpostgresql you can access your database from R(cool right), at this point I felt no need for excel...bit good to have it, cos I don't know what the real life project might look like..
so this is how I became a junior data analyst (looking for experience to compliment this tho)

Doing analysis with R programming using R studio seems interesting, visualizing with it also is nice and even more easy that tableau.
Concerning the google cert on coursera its actually 6900 or so for the course. Even if you dont have any previous knowledge about it i think 2 months should be enough with you spending more time on it.

How about Power BI any idea?

lilvicky68:

Doing analysis with R programming using R studio seems interesting, visualizing with it also is nice and even more easy that tableau.
Concerning the google cert on coursera its actually 6900 or so for the course. Even if you dont have any previous knowledge about it i think 2 months should be enough with you spending more time on it.

How about Power BI any idea?

6900 what? Dollars or Naira?

lilvicky68:

Doing analysis with R programming using R studio seems interesting, visualizing with it also is nice and even more easy that tableau.
Concerning the google cert on coursera its actually 6900 or so for the course. Even if you dont have any previous knowledge about it i think 2 months should be enough with you spending more time on it.

How about Power BI any idea?

So much agree with you on this..I don't see my self working with tableau that much..the ggplot2 package under R is just so cool and easy..and it saves the time of exporting your data into tableau for visualization..and about the Google cert, to be sincere, it's just a good place to start data analytics journey, but there is still lot to learn after taking the course, they actually didn't went into much details..

Have no idea about power bi tho, I think I'm okay with tableau and ggplot..

FoggedBrain:


6900 what? Dollars or Naira?

No, it's actually 39dollars..and that's about 30k

FoggedBrain:


6900 what? Dollars or Naira?

Naira

lilvicky68:

Naira

Okay.... how I go about it please? I'm really interested

FoggedBrain:


Okay.... how I go about it please? I'm really interested

get the coursera app from playstore, register and search the course you want to learn, link your card and pay.

lilvicky68:

get the coursera app from playstore, register and search the course you want to learn, link your card and pay.

and you can also apply for financial aid, it takes 15days to get approval, once you are approved then You can have access to it for free

DataAlchemist:
and you can also apply for financial aid, it takes 15days to get approval, once you are approved then You can have access to it for free

For all courses or just one?

lilvicky68:

For all courses or just one?

all courses bro..

Please can you share the google Data analytics vedio with me?

DataAlchemist:
have been a guest on nairaland for long and have been active reading threads here in the programming section.

Have you started job hunting?

Samuell2019:


Have you started job hunting?

yes bro, sent a couple of resume and emails

nigeriainfo:
Please can you share the google Data analytics vedio with me?

is there a way I can? if there is, then no prob bro..an alternative is to search for google data analytics complete video on youtube.. you can have access to it there, but the disadvantage is that you won't get the certificate and some hands on exercise...but I will advice you to download coursera and try the financial aid method

lilvicky68:

get the coursera app from playstore, register and search the course you want to learn, link your card and pay.

All right. Thanks a lot

I was a bit stuck on SQL subquery lessons on Coursera.
I decided to look through here and probably see people who are towing this path with me so we can connect, maybe.
Thankfully, I came across this thread.
I already downloaded the book by Anthony, just a few pages down, I could tell that it’s loaded.
Thank you for the recommendations.

Adachizzy:
I was a bit stuck on SQL subquery lessons on Coursera.
I decided to look through here and probably see people who are towing this path with me so we can connect, maybe.
Thankfully, I came across this thread.
I already downloaded the book by Anthony, just a few pages down, I could tell that it’s loaded.
Thank you for the recommendations.

You welcome, the book is actually good to get started with SQL, and it provides link to datasets you can practice alongside with, and I'm sure you know the book is actually written for postgresql users, don't know the flavor of sql you currently learning , tho you can apply most of postgresql syntax to other databases, so you good to go

DataAlchemist:


You welcome, the book is actually good to get started with SQL, and it provides link to datasets you can practice alongside with, and I'm sure you know the book is actually written for postgresql users, don't know the flavor of sql you currently learning , tho you can apply most of postgresql syntax to other databases, so you good to go

You know, Google Data Analytics on course doesn't teach with PostgreSQL.
But like you said, there's a lot of similarities.
But for you, which server is better?

Adachizzy:


You know, Google Data Analytics on course doesn't teach with PostgreSQL.
But like you said, there's a lot of similarities.
But for you, which server is better?

I don't know about which has a better server, but with postgresql, you don't have to connect to the internet to use, and big query has usage limit too, and in terms of demand, postgresql and mysql is better

You really inspire me with your write up , I’m a beginner and if you don’t mind can I have your digit for communication , more learning like a mentor

Nice thread. I also finished the Google Data Analytics Certificate course. I'm now focusing on MySQL, after that I'll switch to Tableau and start working on projects to enable me build my portfolio.

If you don't mind we could have a WhatsApp group so we can encourage each other and share resources.

Cc svoboda

garfield1:
Cc svoboda

Sent you a reply via my gmail. Did you get it?

Svoboda:


Sent you a reply via my gmail. Did you get it?

Ye

Fesdam33:
You really inspire me with your write up , I’m a beginner and if you don’t mind can I have your digit for communication , more learning like a mentor

Ohh!! thank you, I'm sorry for reaching out late, was banned for a thread I created sometimes ago for scraping nairaland, lol..so I took a break, about my digit, no problem, but do you mind sending yours?, promise to contact you..