IBM Data Analytics with Excel and R Professional Certificate

Ready to start a career in Data Analysis but don’t know where to begin? This course presents you with a gentle introduction to Data Analysis, the role of a Data Analyst, and the tools used in this job. You will learn about the skills and responsibilities of a data analyst and hear from several data experts sharing their tips & advice to start a career. This course will help you to differentiate between the roles of Data Analysts, Data Scientists, and Data Engineers.

You will familiarize yourself with the data ecosystem, alongside Databases, Data Warehouses, Data Marts, Data Lakes and Data Pipelines. Continue this exciting journey and discover Big Data platforms such as Hadoop, Hive, and Spark. By the end of this course you’ll be able to understand the fundamentals of the data analysis process including gathering, cleaning, analyzing and sharing data and communicating your insights with the use of visualizations and dashboard tools. This all comes together in the final project where it will test your knowledge of the course material, and provide a real-world scenario of data analysis tasks. This course does not require any prior data analysis, spreadsheet, or computer science experience.

Spreadsheet tools like Excel are an essential tool for working with data - whether for data analytics, business, marketing, or research. This course is designed to give you a basic working knowledge of Excel and how to use it for analyzing data.

This course is suitable for those who are interested in pursuing a career in data analysis or data science, as well as anyone looking to use Excel for data analysis in their own domain. No prior experience with spreadsheets or coding is required - all you need is a device with a modern web browser and the ability to create a Microsoft account to access Excel online at no cost. If you have a desktop version of Excel, you can also easily follow along with the course. Throughout this course, you'll gain valuable experience working with data sets and spreadsheets. We'll start by introducing you to spreadsheets like Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets, and show you how to load data from multiple formats. From there, you'll learn how to perform basic data wrangling and cleansing tasks using functions, and expand your knowledge of data analysis through the use of filtering, sorting, and pivot tables. There is a strong focus on practice and applied learning in this course. With each lab, you'll have the opportunity to manipulate data and gain hands-on experience using Excel. You'll learn how to clean and format your data efficiently, and convert it into a pivot table to make it more organized and readable. The final project will allow you to showcase your newly acquired data analysis skills by working with real data sets and spreadsheets. By the end of this course, you'll have a solid foundation in using Excel for data analysis. You'll have worked with multiple data sets and spreadsheets, and will have the skills and knowledge needed to effectively clean and analyze data without having to learn any code. So let's get started!

Learn how to create data visualizations and dashboards using spreadsheets and analytics tools. This course covers some of the first steps for telling a compelling story with your data using various types of charts and graphs. You'll learn the basics of visualizing data with Excel and IBM Cognos Analytics without having to write any code.

You'll start by creating simple charts in Excel such as line, pie and bar charts. You will then create more advanced visualizations with Treemaps, Scatter Charts, Histograms, Filled Map Charts, and Sparklines. Next you’ll also work with the Excel PivotChart feature as well as assemble several visualizations in an Excel dashboard. This course also teaches you how to use business intelligence (BI) tools like Cognos Analytics to create interactive dashboards. By the end of the course you will have an appreciation for the key role that data visualizations play in communicating your data analysis findings, and the ability to effectively create them. Throughout this course there will be numerous hands-on labs to help you develop practical experience for working with Excel and Cognos. There is also a final project in which you’ll create a set of data visualizations and an interactive dashboard to add to your portfolio, which you can share with peers, professional communities or prospective employers.

This is the final course in the Data Analysis and Visualization Foundations Specialization. It contains a graded final examination covering content from three courses: Introduction to Data Analytics, Excel Basics for Data Analysis, and Data Visualization and Dashboards with Excel and Cognos.

From the Introduction to Data Analytics course, you will be assessed on your knowledge of topics such as the data ecosystem and the fundamentals of data analysis, including data gathering and data mining tools. From the Excel Basics for Data Analysis course, you should be prepared to answer test items on topics like how Excel spreadsheets are used in data analytics, cleansing and wrangling data, as well as pivot tables. Finally, from the Data Visualization and Dashboards with Excel and Cognos course, you will demonstrate your knowledge on topics such as the basics of IBM Cognos and using Excel for data visualization.