Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate Review
Google career Certificates has offered a 6-month data analytics certificate. It is a course meant for beginners entering the data analytics field and claims to give the students the skills required to be a junior data analyst. Is it worth the money? I took the course to find out.
Introduction
The certificate is a specialization certificate covering 8 courses from beginner level to a project of your own. The course is taught by Google employees working in various fields as well as people in the field making appearances giving their feedback. Apart from covering the necessary curriculum it also covers workplace etiquette and communication. It provides a strong foundation for your data analytics journey.
Courses
Foundations: Data, Data, Everywhere
This course gives you an idea of the various tasks that a data analyst needs to perform. It gives an overview of the lifecycle of data and the various tasks you might need to perform. If you already have a background in data science then you might still find this course useful as it provides tips and tricks that you might need in a workplace.
Ask Questions to Make Data-Driven Decisions
This course teaches you how to use data to make decisions using the process of scientific thinking. It shows the pitfalls one might encounter while making data-driven decisions and the importance of collecting good data. It also gives an introduction to spreadsheets as a tool for data analytics.
Process Data from Dirty to Clean
This teaches the student the process of data cleaning and verifying the integrity or source of the data. It shows the user data cleaning tools like spreadsheet and SQL (Which I found to be very helpful). This is one of the more hands-on courses in the series as well as one of the most rewarding in terms of practical skills learnt as most data science and analytics involves data cleaning.
Analyze Data to Answer Questions
This course teaches you the techniques used in the analysis of using spreadsheet functions, formatting and formulas. As well as SQL functions, calculations and queries.
Share Data Through the Art of Visualization
This portion focuses on making visuals for data storytelling. It teaches you Tableau to create visualizations using the dashboard. Apart from the visualizations, I appreciate this course for taking the time to teach presentation methods and ways to engage with the audience. It also shows you how to handle Q&A’s with your audience.
Data Analysis with R Programming
Programming is one of the more flexible and reproducible ways to analyze data this course will teach you the programming language R and using R studio show you how to use the basic libraries you might need on a day to day basis on the job. You will also learn about documenting your work to be shared with your colleagues to replicate or review your work.
Google Data Analytics Capstone: Complete a Case Study
The final course and in my opinion the most important course is the capstone project. In this course, you will learn how to make your project and finish the course by making your project. You will also learn about various case studies, Job Prep, and making your portfolio. Repetition is the mother of all learning and by making projects you will use everything that you learnt again and again. It will also show your skill to your potential employers.
Conclusion
The Series is a great introduction to the world of Data Analytics. I completed the Course 1 month after enrolling this is since I already had a background in Data Science. The most time-consuming course for me was the Capstone project which I spent a week and a half on. This course is great for those who can manage themselves and have some background in data analytics or data science. The thing I didn't like about the course was that R was taught instead of python. I understand that R is designed for data analysis and is popular in the field as well. However, Python can do these things as well and is also used in various other fields such as data engineering and Cloud Computing. Teaching R might limit a student in the long term.
Will this course earn you a job in Data Analytics? No. This course will not be able to get you a job or even make a big impact on your resume. Your projects however might be able to show your employer that you have the requirements to do the job. Projects are also a way to get past the min year requirements that most jobs have. This is a great course for beginners whether or not this course will be useful to you depends on the individual.
