Is SAS certification useful?
Well to be straight …. I i would be running some company for me certification holds no value. But it definitely helps in shortlisting students, who have at least tried their best to gain knowledge in this field.Now, after shortlisting ( Let us assume 100 students) , whom should you be hiring if you were recruiting manager? Any Ideas…Well their you will be keeping some…series of tests Right….Computer test for SAS programmingthen Interview process , whether you are clear with the concepts or not.Manager is least worried how much students know, but wants to hire some one , who knows perfect and have enthusiasm for learning new skills.Because, for freshers only Base SAS programming will do the work… That you can learn from Scinatics - Landing page (sister website: Home) Thing is you must solve all exercises and quiz Bank provided by instructor.Link to coursee: http://www.scinatics.com/courses...And…definitely , though Instructor will clear your SAS concepts along with the pitfalls situation.. But it is up to you to Practice what he teaches.You will get Completion certificate as well and Lifetime Access to Course material.
What is the best way to learn data analysis for a beginner?
Practice, practice, practice. I know it’s probably something you’ve probably already heard, but it’s very important. You can read 100 books, but if you don’t ever put it to use, it means nothing.Here’s a list of tools every data analyst should know, along with easy free tutorials for beginners to help you practice.Advanced Microsoft Excel - One of the most important and useful tools to an analyst. Excel is very useful to clean data because of it’s vast set of features. Excel Easy is a great site that covers everything from beginner functions to using excel for data analysis.Statistics & Probability - Descriptive statistics is the most important for an analyst. Descriptive analysis is the process of analyzing historical data, like customer payment history. You could learn all the tools in the world but they mean nothing unless you derive some insight with them.SQL - The most well known database language. Depending on where you are working, some small companies might require you to know how to retrieve and manipulate data from a database. Mode Analytics has a very good in-depth tutorial covering how to use SQL for analyticsTableau - After speaking with a few analyst myself, I realized how that Tableau, a visualization software, is gaining some traction. Tableau lets you import data from Excel or a database and create custom visualizations. Tableau also has some awesome training videos covering the different facets of their product.I also have created this data analysis for beginners course on udemy.Data Analysis Course For Beginners - UdemyThis course will go over all the basics you need to know to get started with data analysis. You can use this coupon code to get you started: EARLY_BIRDAt K2 Labs, we are launching a new Data Analysis course which covers each of the above mentioned items in great detail, and more such as statistical analysis and optional modules (Python & R). If you’re interested, we are currently filling our first class which is scheduled to launch in summer of 2017
What should I study or learn if I want to be a data analyst for a software company like Quora, Zynga, Airbnb, etc.?
When I was on the analytics team at Airbnb (2011-2012), we looked for the following:1. Research design/methodology - Ability to set up experiments properly, with careful attention to control groups and confounding variables- Knowledge of basic statistics techniques and concepts (regressions, ttests, significance, etc)- Ability to delve into open ended problems and find trends in huge sets of data- Understanding of all the caveats and complications of research without getting so bogged down in them that it takes months to get results2. Tools to manipulate data (programming ability, sql, statistics tools, etc)- Python, Ruby, or another similar programming language- R, STATA, SAS, or some other statistical programming language for analyzing data- SQL or similar querying/manipulation language, understanding of fairly complex joins, nested queries, etc- Excel can be useful but details can probably be learned as needed (personally, I don't think I've ever used a pivot table in my job because I use other tools to combine data)- Hive, Hadoop, etc. are really useful, albeit not essential for getting hired (but would mean a lot more than detailed knowledge of Excel, which I would assume any smart person could pick up as needed)3. Ability to interpret and summarize results broadly for technical and non-technical audiences4. Any other special skills, such as data visualization, machine learning, advanced statistical techniques, etc.At ClassDojo, we are at an earlier stage, and the data is in JSON instead of SQL, so there is even more need for everyone to program. I spend 90% of my time getting data in place in Python before I can do any actual analysis or visualization (in Python or R).Edit: For a much more complete answer, you can view this curriculum that I wrote using free online materials: Data Analysis Learning Path by Claudia Gold | SlideRule