Data Analyst

A Data Analyst is someone who uses data to help find and make insights to help the company be more successful. These analysts collect information/data about specific topics and then interpret, analyze, and present the findings in detailed reports (usually a visually-friendly, less-technical report for non-data analysts to look at). ¹https://www.discoverdatascience.org/career-information/data-analyst/

What Does a Data Analyst Do?

A Data Analyst’s responsibilities and role will vary depending on the industry, type of company and department in which they work. Typically they provide information that enables companies to define things such as:

• products to be offered to customers according to their needs
• marketing strategies to adopt, or
• improvements to be made to manufacturing and production processes.

Examples of Data Analyst Responsibilities:

• Designing and maintaining data systems and databases; this includes fixing coding errors and other data-related problems.
• Mining data from primary and secondary sources, then reorganizing said data in a format that can be easily read by either human or machine.
• Using statistical tools to interpret data sets, paying particular attention to trends and patterns that could be valuable for diagnostic and predictive analytics efforts.
• Demonstrating the significance of their work in the context of local, national, and global trends that impact both their organization and industry.
• Preparing reports for executive leadership that effectively communicate trends, patterns, and predictions using relevant data .
• Collaborating with programmers, engineers, and organizational leaders to identify opportunities for process improvements, recommend system modifications, and develop policies for data governance.
• Creating appropriate documentation that allows stakeholders to understand the steps of the data analysis process and duplicate or replicate the analysis if necessary.³https://www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/technology/blog/what-does-a-data-analyst-do/

Below is an example of a data analytics project from a data analyst at a financial services company.

Goal: Analyze the impact of the new 2018 Tax law on tax refunds and tax payments owed.

How to do it: Use data on consumer transactions (data on people’s spending) to find insights into how tax refunds and tax payments changed due to the new law.

What is the difference between Data Analysts and Data Scientists?

A data analyst is often not responsible for creating the algorithms used for actually collecting and managing the usually massive datasets. Rather than creating their own data projects, data analysts often find themselves tackling specific business tasks using existing tools, systems, and data sets. However, both roles aim to use information to answer questions and solve problems for the benefit of their business/industry.⁴https://www.discoverdatascience.org/career-information/data-analyst/

What types of Data Analyst Jobs are out there?

Any company that uses data to make decisions/insights will have a place for Data Analysts. Some popular industries include: Finance, Tech, Healthcare, and Consumer Retail.

Some examples of different job titles that are considered Data Analysts (depending on the company and team):

• Business analyst – Analyzes business specific data.
• Management reporting – Reports data analytics to management on business functions.
• Compensation and benefits analyst – Usually part of a human resources department that analyzes employee compensation and benefits data.
• Budget analyst – Analyzes and reports on the company’s budget.
• Insurance underwriting analyst: analyzes individual, company, and industry data for decisions on insurance plans.
• Actuary – Analyzes mortality, accident, sickness, disability, and retirement rates to create probability tables, risk forecasting, and liability planning for insurance companies.
• Sales analytics – Focuses on sales data that helps to support and improve the sales process.
• Web analytics – Analyzes a specific web page, topic focus, or website to monitor and improve different relevant metrics.
• Fraud analytics – Monitors and analyzes fraud data.
• Social media data analyst – social media and growing tech companies rely on data to build, monitor, and advance the technology of social media platforms.
• Machine learning analyst – machine learning is a concept that involves programming and feeding machines data so that they learn to make insights (it is a subset of artificial intelligence). ⁵https://www.investopedia.com/articles/professionals/121515/data-analyst-career-path-qualifications.asp

An essential aspect of data analytics is using computer programming to collect and then derive insights from data. Below are some common data analysis programming languages/tools.

• SQL
• Excel/Spreadsheets
• Tableau
• Python
• R
• Matlab
• Machine Learning
• SAS

What types of skills are necessary to be a successful Data Analyst?

• Analytical skills – Data analysts work with large amounts of data and need to analyze it to find conclusions.
• Communication skills – Data analysts present their findings, and translate the data into understandable documents or reports. They need to communicate complex ideas into easily understood terms.
• Critical thinking – Data analysts must look at the numbers, trends, and data and form meaningful conclusions.
• Attention to detail – Use of incorrect and sloppy data causes incorrect and sloppy results.
• Math skills – In order to make sense of and come to insightful mathematically driven conclusions.
• Technical skills/tools – There are many technical skills and computer programs that a data analyst must have in order to be proficient.⁶https://www.discoverdatascience.org/career-information/data-analyst/

What are some challenges of working in Data Analytics?

What are some benefits of working in Data Analytics?

Typical Salary?

• Entry-level data analysts – $80-85k
• Senior data analysts – $115k-$145k⁷https://www.mastersindatascience.org/careers/data-analyst/

Should I become a Data Analyst?