1.

Learn about data phases and tools

Hey. It's great to have you back. We've talked a little bit about the data analysis process. As a quick refresher,
the data analysis process phases are ask, prepare, process, analyze, share, and act. You might remember me
saying earlier that this entire program is modeled after these steps. Now, we're going to really dig in and
explore how each of these phases work together. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.
First, let's spend a little time understanding the data life cycle. No, data isn't actually alive, but it does have a
life cycle. How do data analysts bring data to life? Well, it starts with the right data analysis tool. These include
spreadsheets, databases, query languages, and visualization software. Don't worry if you don't know how these
work, or even what they are. At one point, every data analyst has been right where you are right now, and they
probably had a lot of the same questions.
I remember when I first started learning about spreadsheets. I was a young intern, and the company I was
working for was in the middle of a big systems change. That meant, we had to move tons of reports from the
old system to the new one. After a few weeks, I noticed that even the people who were further in their careers
were not as technically minded as I was. That became a great opportunity for me to add value. My aha
spreadsheet moment came when I started researching shortcuts that I could use to work with the spreadsheets
more efficiently. This would really streamline the process of getting those reports moved over to the new
system.
Once everything started flowing, I remember getting emails from other finance analysts at the company. They
were so grateful that someone had come in and fixed a problem that no one else could. That inspired me to go
even further and learn how to use spreadsheets in all sorts of incredible ways. As you continue through this
course, I bet you'll be just as impressed as I was. And before you know it, you'll bring data to life too. Let's get
started.
2. Stages of the data life cycle
Here's a question for you. When you think about a life cycle, what's the first thing that comes to mind? Now I'm
not a mind reader, but I know whatever you're thinking is right. There's actually no wrong answer because
everything has a life cycle. One of the most well known examples of a life cycle is a butterfly. Butterflies begin
as eggs, hatch into caterpillars and then become a chrysalis. That's where the real magic happens.
Data has a life cycle of its own too. In this video, we're going to talk about each of the stages in that life cycle to
help you understand the individual phases data goes through. The life cycle of data is plan, capture, manage,
analyze, archive and destroy. Let's start with the first phase, planning. This actually happens well before starting
an analysis project. During planning, a business decides what kind of data it needs, how it will be managed
throughout its life cycle, who will be responsible for it, and the optimal outcomes. For example, let's say an
electricity provider wanted to gain insights into how to save people energy.
In the planning phase, they might decide to capture information on how much electricity its customers use each
year, what types of buildings are being powered, and what types of devices are being powered inside of them.
The electricity company would also decide which team members will be responsible for collecting, storing, and
sharing that data. All of this happens during planning, and it helps set up the rest of the project. The next phase is
when you capture data. This is where data is collected from a variety of different sources and brought into the
organization. With so much data being created everyday, the ways to collect it are truly endless. One common
method is getting data from outside resources. For example, if you were doing data analysis on weather patterns,
you'd probably get data from a publicly available dataset like the National Climatic Data Center.
Another way to get data is from a company's own documents and files, which are usually stored inside a
database. While we've mentioned databases before, we haven't gone into too much detail about what they are. A
database is a collection of data stored in a computer system. In the case of our electricity provider, the business
would probably measure data usage among its customers within a database that it owns. As a quick note, when
you maintain a database of customer information, ensuring data integrity, credibility, and privacy are all
important concerns. You'll learn a lot more about that later on. Now that we've captured our data, we'll move on
to the next phase of the data life cycle, manage.
Here we're talking about how we care for our data, how and where it's stored, the tools used to keep it safe and
secure, and the actions taken to make sure that it's maintained properly. This phase is very important to data
cleansing, which we'll cover later on. Next it's time to analyze your data. This is where data analysts really shine.
In this phase, the data is used to solve problems, make great decisions, and support business goals. For example,
one of our electricity company's goals might be to find ways to help customers save energy. Moving along the
data life cycle now evolves to the archive phase.
Archiving means storing data in a place where it's still available, but may not be used again. During analysis,
analysts handle huge amounts of data. Can you imagine if we had to sort through all of the available data that's
out there, even if it was no longer useful and relevant to our work? It makes way more sense to archive it than to
keep it around. And finally, the last step of the data life cycle, the destroy phase. Yes, it sounds sad, but when you
destroy data, it won't hurt a bit. So let's get back to our electricity provider example.
They would have data stored on multiple hard drives. To destroy it, the company would use a secure data erasure
software. If there were any paper files, they would be shredded too. This is important for protecting a company's
private information, as well as private data about its customers. And there you have it, the data life cycle. And
now that you understand the different phases data goes through during its life cycle, you can better understand
how to approach the data analysis process, which we'll talk about soon.
3. Variations of the data life cycle
You have learned that there are six stages to the data life cycle. Here's a recap:
1. Plan: Decide what kind of data is needed, how it will be managed, and who will be responsible for it.
2. Capture: Collect or bring in data from a variety of different sources.
3. Manage: Care for and maintain the data. This includes determining how and where it is stored and the
tools used to do so.
4. Analyze: Use the data to solve problems, make decisions, and support business goals.
5. Archive: Keep relevant data stored for long-term and future reference.
6. Destroy: Remove data from storage and delete any shared copies of the data.
Note: Be careful not to confuse the six stages of the data life cycle (plan, capture, manage, analyze, archive, and
destroy) with the six phases of the data analysis process (ask, prepare, process, analyze, share, and act). They are
not interchangeable.
The data life cycle provides a generic or common framework for how data is managed. You may recall that
variations of the data analysis life cycle were described in Origins of the data analysis process. The same can be
done for the data life cycle. The rest of this reading provides a glimpse of how government, finance, and
education institutions can view data life cycles a little differently.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service uses the following data life cycle:
1. Plan
2. Acquire
3. Maintain
4. Access
5. Evaluate
 6. Archive
For more information, refer to U.S. Fish and Wildlife's Data Management Life Cycle page.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
The USGS uses the data life cycle below:
1. Plan
2. Acquire
3. Process
4. Analyze
5. Preserve
6. Publish/share
Several cross-cutting or overarching activities are also performed during each stage of their life cycle:
 Describe (metadata and documentation)
 Manage quality
 Backup and secure
For more information, refer to the USGS Data Lifecycle page.
Financial institutions
Financial institutions may take a slightly different approach to the data life cycle as described in The Data Life
Cycle, an article in Strategic Finance magazine:
1. Capture
2. Qualify
3. Transform
4. Utilize
5. Report
6. Archive
7. Purge
Harvard Business School (HBS)
One final data life cycle informed by Harvard University research has eight stages:
1. Generation
2. Collection
3. Processing
4. Storage
5. Management
6. Analysis
7. Visualization
 8. Interpretation
For more information, refer to 8 Steps in the Data Life Cycle.
Key takeaways
Understanding the importance of the data life cycle will set you up for success as a data analyst. Individual stages
in the data life cycle will vary from company to company or by industry or sector. Historical data is important to
both the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the USGS, so their data life cycle focuses on archiving and backing
up data. Harvard's interests are in research and teaching, so its data life cycle includes visualization and
interpretation even though these are more often associated with a data analysis life cycle. The HBS data life cycle
also doesn't call out a stage for purging or destroying data. In contrast, the data life cycle for finance clearly
identifies archive and purge stages. To sum it up, although data life cycles vary, one data management principle is
universal: Govern how data is handled so that it is accurate, secure, and available to meet your organization's
needs.
4. The phases of data analysis and this program
- Now that you understand all the phases of the data lifecycle, it's time to move on to the phases of data analysis.
They sound similar, but are two different things. Data analysis isn't a lifecycle; it's the process of analyzing data.
Coming up, we'll look at each step of the data analysis process and how it will relate to your work as a data
analyst. Even this program is designed to follow these steps. Understanding these connections will help guide
your own analysis, and your work in this program. You've already learned that this program is modeled after the
stages of the data analysis process.
This program is split into courses, six of which are based upon the steps of data analysis: ask, prepare, process,
analyze, share, and act. Okay, let's start with the first step in data analysis, the ask phase. In this phase, we do two
things. We define the problem to be solved and we make sure that we fully understand stakeholder expectations.
Stakeholders hold a stake in the project. They are people who have invested time and resources into a project and
are interested in the outcome. Let's break that down.
First, defining a problem means you look at the current state and identify how it's different from the ideal state.
Usually there's an obstacle we need to get rid of or something wrong that needs to be fixed. For instance, a sports
arena might want to reduce the time fans spend waiting in the ticket line. The obstacle is figuring out how to get
the customers to their seats more quickly. Another important part of the ask phase is understanding stakeholder
expectations. The first step here is to determine who the stakeholders are. That may include your manager, an
executive sponsor, or your sales partners.
There can be lots of stakeholders, but what they all have in common is that they help make decisions, influence
actions and strategies and have specific goals they want to meet. They also care about the project and that's why
it's so important to understand their expectations. For instance, if your manager assigns you a data analysis
project related to business risk, it would be smart to confirm whether they want to include all types of risks that
could affect the company or just risks related to weather, such as hurricanes and tornadoes. Communicating with
your stakeholders is key in making sure you stay engaged and on track throughout the project. So as a data
analyst, developing strong communication strategies is very important. This part of the ask phase helps you keep
focused on the problem itself, not just its symptoms. As you learned earlier, the five whys are extremely helpful
here.
In an upcoming course, you'll learn how to ask effective questions and define the problem by working with
stakeholders. You'll also cover strategies that can help you share what you discover in a way that keeps people
interested. After that, we'll move on to the prepare step of the data analysis process. This is where data analysts
collect and store data they'll use for the upcoming analysis process. You'll learn more about the different types of
data and how to identify which kinds of data are most useful for solving a particular problem. You'll also
discover why it's so important that your data and results are objective and unbiased. In other words, any decisions
made from your analysis should always be based on facts and be fair and impartial.
Next is the process step. Here data analysts find and eliminate any errors and inaccuracies that can get in the way
of results. This usually means cleaning data, transforming it into more useful format, combining two or more
datasets to make information more complete, and removing outliers, which are any data points that could skew
the information. After that, you'll learn how to check the data you prepared to make sure it's complete and
correct. This phase is all about getting the details right, so you'll also fix typos, inconsistencies or missing and
inaccurate data. And to top it off, you'll gain strategies for verifying and sharing your data cleansing with
stakeholders. Then it's time to analyze.
Analyzing the data you've collected involves using tools to transform and organize that information so that you
can draw useful conclusions, make predictions, and drive informed decision making. There are lots of powerful
tools data analysts use in their work and in this course, you'll learn about two of them: spreadsheets and
Structured Query Language, or SQL, which is often pronounced sequel. The next course is based on the share
phase. Here you'll learn how data analysts interpret results and share them with others to help stakeholders make
effective data-driven decisions. In the share phase, visualization is a data analyst's best friend. So this course will
highlight why visualization is essential to getting others to understand what your data is telling you. With the
right visuals, facts and figures become so much easier to see and complex concepts become easier to understand.
We'll explore different kinds of visuals and some great data visualization tools. You'll also practice your own
presentation skills by creating compelling slideshows and learning how to be fully prepared to answer questions.
And for our final data analysis phase, we have act. This is the exciting moment when the business takes all of the
insights you, the data analyst, have provided and puts them to work in order to solve the original business
problem. And we'll be acting on what you've learned throughout this program. This is when you'll prepare for
your job search and have the chance to complete a case study project. It's a great opportunity for you to bring
together everything you've worked on throughout this course, plus adding a case study to your portfolio helps
you stand out from the other candidates when you interview for your first data analyst job.
Now you know the different steps of the data analysis process and how our course reflects it. You have
everything you need to understand how this course works. And my fellow Googlers and I will be here to guide
you every step of the way.
5. More on the phases of data analysis and this program
Each step in the data analysis process—ask, prepare, process, analyze, share, and act—plays a crucial role in
extracting meaningful insights from data. As you navigate through each phase, from asking the right questions to
taking informed actions, you harness the true power of data. In this reading, you’ll explore how the data analysis
process guides this program.
The ask phase
At the start of any successful data analysis, the data analyst:
 Takes the time to fully understand stakeholder expectations
 Defines the problem to be solved
 Decides which questions to answer in order to solve the problem
Qualifying stakeholder expectations means determining who the stakeholders are, what they want, when they
want it, why they want it, and how best to communicate with them. Defining the problem means looking at the
current state and identifying the ways in which it’s different from the ideal state. With expectations qualified and
the problem defined, you can derive questions that will help achieve these goals.
In an upcoming course, you'll learn how to ask effective questions and define the problem by working with
stakeholders. You'll also cover strategies that can help you share what you discover in a way that keeps people
interested.
The prepare phase
In the prepare phase, the emphasis is on identifying and locating data you can use to answer your questions. In an
upcoming course, you'll learn more about the different types of data and how to identify which kinds of data are
most useful for solving a particular problem. You'll also discover why it's so important that data and results are
objective and unbiased. In other words, any decisions made from an analysis should always be based on facts and
be fair and impartial.
The process phase
In this phase, the aim is to refine the data. Data analysts find and eliminate any errors and inaccuracies that can
get in the way of results. This usually means:
 Cleaning data
 Transforming data into a more useful format
 Combining two or more datasets to make information more complete
 Removing outliers (data points that could skew the information)
After data analysts process data, they check the data they prepared to make sure it's complete and correct. This
phase is all about getting the details right. Accordingly, the data analyst will refine strategies for verifying and
sharing their data cleaning with stakeholders. In an upcoming course, you’ll use spreadsheets and structured
query language, or SQL, to clean data.
The analyze phase
With a solid foundation of well-defined questions and clean data, you’ll delve into the analyze phase. This is
when you turn the data you’ve gathered, prepared, and processed into actionable information. Data analysts use
many powerful tools in their work. In one upcoming course you'll continue using two of them: spreadsheets and
SQL. In another upcoming course you’ll explore using the programming language Python to work with and
analyze data.
The share phase
This phase is exactly what it sounds like: It’s time to share what you’ve learned with your stakeholders! In this
part of the program, you'll learn how data analysts interpret results and share them with others to help
stakeholders make effective, data-driven decisions. In the share phase, visualization is a data analyst's best friend.
So, an upcoming course will highlight why visualization is essential to getting others to understand what your
data is telling you.
The act phase
The data analysis journey culminates in the act phase, when data insights are put to work. For you, this action
involves preparing for your job search and having the chance to complete a case study project. It's a great
opportunity for you to bring together everything you've worked on throughout this course. Plus, adding a case
study to your portfolio helps you stand out from other candidates!
Learn about the process through the program:
i. Learn more about the ask phase of the process in the Ask Questions to Make Data-Driven Decisions
course.
ii. Learn more about the prepare phase of the process in the Prepare Data for Exploration course.
iii. Learn more about the process phase of the process in the Process Data from Dirty to Clean course.
iv. Learn more about the analyze phase of the process in the Analyze Data to Answer Questions and
Introduction to Data Analysis Using Python courses.
v. Learn more about the share phase of the process in the Share Data Through the Art of Visualization.
 vi. Learn more about the act phase of the process in the Google Data Analytics Capstone: Complete a Case
Study course.
Note: The course links are for you to preview. Please do not complete the courses at this time. You may mark this
activity as complete after you understand how the courses align to the data analysis process.
6. Molly: Example of the data analysis process
Regardless of what type of data analysis you're conducting, the process is generally the same. The example that
I'll walk through is that of our employee engagement survey, but you could imagine that this process applies to
just about any data analysis that you're going to conduct as an analyst. The first thing you want to do is ask. You
want to ask all of the right questions at the beginning of the engagement so that you better understand what your
leaders and stakeholders need from this analysis. The types of questions that I generally ask are around, what is
the problem that we're trying to solve? What is the purpose of this analysis? What are we hoping to learn from it?
After you've asked all the right questions and you've wrapped your arms around the scope of the analysis you
need to conduct, the next step is to prepare. We need to be thinking about what type of data we need to answer
those key questions. This could be anything from quantitative data or qualitative data. It could be cross-sectional
or points in time versus longitudinal over a long period of time. We need to be thinking about the type of data we
need in order to answer the questions that we've set out to answer based on what we learned when we asked the
right questions. We also need to be thinking about how we're going to collect that data or if we need to collect
that data. It may be the case that we need to collect this data brand-new.
So we need to think about what type of data we're going to be collecting and how. For our employee engagement
survey, we do that via survey of both quantitative and qualitative questions. But it may actually be the case that
for many analyses, the data that you're looking for already exist. Then it's a question of working with those data
owners to make sure that you are able to leverage that data and use it responsibly. After you've done all the hard
work to collect your data, now you need to process that data. It begins with cleaning. This to me is the most fun
part of the data analytics process.
We can think of it as the initial introduction or the handshake, hello, to your data. This is where you get a chance
to understand its structure, its quirks, its nuances, and you really get a chance to understand deeply what type of
data you're going to be working with and understanding what potential that data has to answer all of your
questions. This is such an important part, too, where we're running through all of our quality assurance checks.
For example, do we have all of the data that we anticipated we would have? Are we missing data at random or is
it missing in a systematic way such that maybe something went wrong with our data collection effort? If needed,
did we code all of our data the right way? Are there any outliers that we need to treat differently?
This is the part where we spend a lot of time really digging deeply into the structure and nuance of the data to
make sure that you're able to analyze it appropriately and responsibly. After cleaning our data and running all of
our quality assurance checks, now is the point where we analyze our data, making sure to do so in as objective
and unbiased a way as possible. To do this, the first thing we do is run through a series of analyses that we've
already planned ahead of time based on the questions that we know we want to answer from the very, very
beginning of the process. One thing that's probably the hardest about this particular process, the hardest thing
about analyzing data, is that we as analysts are trained to look for patterns. Over time as we become better and
better at our jobs, what we'll often find is that we can start to intuit what we might see in the data. We might have
a sneaking suspicion as to what the data are going to tell us. This is the point where we have to take a step back
and let the data speak for itself.
As data analysts, we are storytellers, but we also have to keep in mind that it is not our story to tell. That story
belongs to the data, and it is our job as analysts to amplify and tell that story in as unbiased and objective a way
as possible. The next step is to share all of the data and insights that you've generated from your analyses. Now
typically for employee engagement survey, we start by sharing the high-level findings with our executive team.
We want them to have a landscape view of how the organization is feeling, and we want to make sure that there
aren't any surprises as they dig deeper and deeper into the data to understand how teams are feeling and how
individual employees are feeling. All of this work from asking the right questions to collecting your data, to
analyzing and sharing, doesn't mean much of anything if we aren't taking action on what we've just learned. This
to me is the most critical part, especially of our employee engagement survey.
I like to say that the survey is actually the easy part, and acting on the results is really where the real work begins.
This is where we use all of those data-driven insights to decide what types of interventions we want to introduce,
not only at the organizational level, but also at the team level as well. We might find, for example, that the
organization is working on a series of interventions to help improve part of the employee experience, whereas
individual teams have additional roles, responsibilities to play, to either bolster some of those efforts or to
introduce new ones to better meet their team where their strengths and opportunity areas are. The data analysis
process is rigorous, but it is lengthy. I can completely appreciate that we as data analysts, get so excited about
just diving right into the data and doing what we do best. The challenge is that if we don't work through the
process in its entirety, if we try to skip steps, we're not going to be able to elicit the insights that we're looking
for. I absolutely love my job.
I have such a deep appreciation for data and what it can do and what type of insight we can derive from it.
7. Explore data analyst tools
I'm looking forward to introducing you to some of the tools data analyst use each and every day. There are tons
of options out there. But the most common ones you'll see analyst use are spreadsheets, query languages and
visualization tools. And this video is going to give you a quick look at how these tools are being used by data
analysts everyday. Believe it or not, I was several years into my accounting and finance career before I saw all of
these tools working together. At that point I was very experienced with spreadsheets, and had worked in large
data sets with some of the traditional database programs. I had the foundational skill set to use query languages,
and I had dabbled in visualizations, but I had never brought them all together.
Then I got hired here at Google. And it was so eye-opening to come into a place like this with an abundance of
information everywhere you look. As an analyst at Google, the true power of these tools became so much clearer
to me. I became more focused on really maximizing everything these tools could do, streamlining my reporting
and just making my work simpler. All of the sudden, I had a lot more time and space to dedicate to identifying
new problems to solve and driving decision-making. Without a doubt, once you've learned the power of these
tools, you will be well on your way to becoming the best data analyst you can possibly be. All right, I hope that
story has you even more motivated for this course.
Let's get started with spreadsheets. Again, there are lots of different spreadsheet solutions, but two popular
options are Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. To put it simply, a spreadsheet is a digital worksheet. It stores,
organizes, and sorts data. This is important because the usefulness of your data depends on how well it's
structured. When you put your data into a spreadsheet, you can see patterns, group information and easily find
the information you need. Spreadsheets also have some really useful features called formulas and functions.
A formula is a set of instructions that performs a specific calculation using the data in a spreadsheet. Formulas
can do basic things like add, subtract, multiply and divide, but they don't stop there. You can also use formulas to
find the average of a number set. Look up a particular value, return the sum of a set of values that meets a
particular rule, and so much more. A function is a preset command that automatically performs a specific process
or task using the data in a spreadsheet. That sounds pretty technical, I know, so let's break it down. Just think of a
function as a simpler, more efficient way of doing something that would normally take a lot of time.
In other words, functions can help make you more efficient. Those are the spreadsheet basics for now. Later on,
you'll see them in action and start working with spreadsheets yourself. The next data analysis tool is called query
language. A query language is a computer programming language that allows you to retrieve and manipulate data
from a database. You'll learn something called structured query language, more commonly known as SQL. SQL
is a language that lets data analysts communicate with a database.
A database is a collection of data stored in a computer system. SQL is the most widely used structured query
language for a couple of reasons. It's easy to understand and works very well with all kinds of databases. With
SQL, data analysts can access the data they need by making a query. Although query means question, I like to
think of it as more of a request. So you're requesting that the database do something for you. You can ask it to do
a lot of different things such as insert, delete, select or update data.
Okay, that's a top-level look at SQL. In a later video, we'll explore it further and use SQL to do some really cool
things with data. Lastly, let's talk about data visualization. You've learned that data visualization is the graphical
representation of information. Some examples include graphs, maps, and tables. Most people process visuals more
easily than words alone. That's why visualizations are so important.
They help data analysts communicate their insights to others, in an effective and compelling way. When you
think about the data analysis process, after data is prepared, processed and analyzed, the insights are visualized
so it can be understood and shared. This makes it easier for stakeholders to draw conclusions, make decisions,
and come up with strategies. Some popular visualization tools are Tableau and Looker. Data analysts like using
Tableau because it helps them create visuals that are very easy to understand. This means that even non-technical
users can get the information they need. Looker is also popular with data analysts because it gives them an easy
way to create visuals based on the results of a query.
With Looker, you can give stakeholders a complete picture of your work by showing them visualization data and
the actual data related to it. All visualization tools have great features that are useful in different situations. Soon
you will learn how to decide which tool to use for a particular job. And that's everything you need to know about
the data life cycle and the data analysis process. You'll get a chance to test out what you know, so you can feel
confident moving forward in this course. Feel free to take some time to re-familiarize yourself with the concepts
and when you're ready, give it your best shot. If you're ever unsure of an answer, you can always go back and
review the videos and readings.
Then you'll be ready to move on to the next set of videos, where we'll continue exploring the data analytics tools
you've already covered. And you'll get some really fascinating insights into exactly how they work. Before long,
you'll have the knowledge and confidence to start using them yourself. Stay tuned.
8. Key data analyst tools
As you are learning, the most common programs and solutions used by data analysts include spreadsheets, query
languages, and visualization tools. In this reading, you will learn more about each one. You will cover when to
use them, and why they are so important in data analytics.
Image of a woman holding a laptop and standing next to a toolbox
Spreadsheets
Data analysts rely on spreadsheets to collect and organize data. Two popular spreadsheet applications you will
probably use a lot in your future role as a data analyst are Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets.
Spreadsheets structure data in a meaningful way by letting you
Collect, store, organize, and sort information
Identify patterns and piece the data together in a way that works for each specific data project
Create excellent data visualizations, like graphs and charts.
Databases and query languages
A database is a collection of structured data stored in a computer system. Some popular Structured Query
Language (SQL) programs include MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and BigQuery.
Query languages
Allow analysts to isolate specific information from a database(s)
Make it easier for you to learn and understand the requests made to databases
Allow analysts to select, create, add, or download data from a database for analysis
Visualization tools
Data analysts use a number of visualization tools, like graphs, maps, tables, charts, and more. Two popular
visualization tools are Tableau and Looker.
These tools
Turn complex numbers into a story that people can understand
Help stakeholders come up with conclusions that lead to informed decisions and effective business strategies
Have multiple features
- Tableau's simple drag-and-drop feature lets users create interactive graphs in dashboards and worksheets
- Looker communicates directly with a database, allowing you to connect your data right to the visual tool you
choose
Programming languages
A career as a data analyst also involves using programming languages, like Python and R, to prepare, process,
analyze, and share data.
Key takeaway
You have a lot of tools as a data analyst. This is a first glance at the possibilities, and you will explore many of
these tools in-depth throughout this program.
9. Choose the right tool for the job
As a data analyst, you will usually have to decide which program or solution is right for the particular project you
are working on. In this reading, you will learn more about how to choose which tool you need and when.
Depending on which phase of the data analysis process you’re in, you will need to use different tools. For
example, if you are focusing on creating complex and eye-catching visualizations, then the visualization tools we
discussed earlier are the best choice. But if you are focusing on organizing, cleaning, and analyzing data, then
you will probably be choosing between spreadsheets and databases using queries. Spreadsheets and databases
both offer ways to store, manage, and use data. The basic content for both tools are sets of values. Yet, there are
some key differences, too:

Spreadsheets Databases

Accessed through a software application Database accessed using a query language

Structured data in a row and column format Structured data using rules and relationships

Organizes information in cells Organizes information in complex collections

Provides access to a limited amount of data Provides access to huge amounts of data

Manual data entry Strict and consistent data entry

 Spreadsheets Databases

Generally one user at a time Multiple users

Controlled by the user Controlled by a database management system

You don’t have to choose one or the other because each serves its own purpose. Generally, data analysts work
with a combination of the two, as both tools are very useful in data analytics. For example, you can store data in
a database, then export it to a spreadsheet for analysis. Or, if you are collecting information in a spreadsheet, and
it becomes too much for that particular platform, you can import it into a database. And, later in this course, you
will learn about programming languages like Python that give you even greater control of your data.
Key takeaways
The choice of data analysis tools depends on the specific task at hand. Spreadsheets are suitable for organizing,
cleaning, and analyzing small to medium datasets. Databases are ideal for storing, managing, and analyzing large
and complex datasets. Data analysts often use a combination of spreadsheets, databases, and programming
languages to effectively handle a wide range of data analysis tasks.
10. Glossary terms from course 1, module 2
Terms and definitions for Course 1, Module 2
Database: A collection of data stored in a computer system
Formula: A set of instructions used to perform a calculation using the data in a spreadsheet
Function: A preset command that automatically performs a specified process or task using the data in a
spreadsheet
Query: A request for data or information from a database
Query language: A computer programming language used to communicate with a database
Stakeholders: People who invest time and resources into a project and are interested in its outcome
Structured Query Language: A computer programming language used to communicate with a database
Spreadsheet: A digital worksheet
SQL: (Refer to Structured Query Language)