Phase 00: Start here

Data Analytics for Beginners: 6 Free Starter Lessons

How to use the course, how an analyst thinks, and your first SQL query and Python script. For complete beginners.

6 lessonsAbout 11.5 hours6 beginnerFree, runs offline

Six short lessons for complete beginners. If you have never written code or a database query, start with lesson 01 and go in order.

The 6 lessons, in learning order

1. Run your first lesson
Is Python ready on your computer, and how does a lesson tell you that your answer is right?
Level 1: Beginner · about 1 hour
2. Think like an analyst
A manager says sales are down. What do you ask before you touch any data?
Level 1: Beginner · about 2 hours
3. Tables, rows and grain
What does one row of this table mean, and which column identifies it?
Level 1: Beginner · about 1.5 hours
4. Your first SQL query
Which ten orders were the biggest last week, and from which city?
Level 1: Beginner · about 2 hours
5. NULLs, CASE and COALESCE
How many orders have no delivery date, and how do we bucket orders into small, medium and large?
Level 1: Beginner · about 2 hours
6. Python for spreadsheet people
Can you total a column of a CSV without opening Excel?
Level 1: Beginner · about 3 hours

What you will be able to do

By the end of the phase you will have built and tested each of these yourself, one per lesson:

Run your first lesson: A working Python 3.9 or later on your computer, checked with one command.
Think like an analyst: A question plan: the clarified question, the decision, the metric and its definition, the comparison, the segments and the data needed.
Tables, rows and grain: The grain and primary key of three tables, written down.
Your first SQL query: A first look at a table with SELECT *, ORDER BY and LIMIT.
NULLs, CASE and COALESCE: Counts of orders with and without a delivery date, using COUNT(*) and COUNT(column).
Python for spreadsheet people: read_rows: reads a CSV file into a list of rows.

How to start

Clone the course and run the first lesson's test. It fails until your exercise is right. You need only Python 3.9 or later.

git clone https://github.com/Ani19arya/analytics-from-scratch
cd analytics-from-scratch/phases/00-start-here/01-run-your-first-lesson
python3 test_lesson.py

This phase on GitHub

Jobs that ask for these skills

Open roles on Real Analyst Jobs where this phase's skills come up, read daily from company career pages:

All 12 phases of Analytics from Scratch