? ? ? ? There are two classes of skills that are needed to be a successful data analyst: both soft and technical skills are needed.? The core work flow for a data analyst is several?fold.? Once a problem has been defined, and a hypothesis is to be tested, the data must be drawn out and then analyzed.? The resulting analysis is written up and communicated to the interested stake holder.? In order to do this there are several hard and soft skills that are required.
Technical Skills:
A basic knowledge of statistics to a rigorous understanding of Machine Learning.? Most consumers of analysis will not look at more than descriptive analysis (means, medians, significance).??
Computer skills that are useful are a Querying Language (SQL,Hive,Pig), a scripting Language (Python,Matlab), a?Statistical Language (R, SAS, SPSS), and a Spreadsheet (Excel).?
Soft Skills
Defining the problem?and narrowing the analysis down often requires a lot of soft skills.? Balancing the demands on your time to reduce infinite what-if scenarios and understanding the requestors needs requires good communication and understanding of the business needs.? Avoid agreeing to delivering too much information that will be not useful to solving the core issues.?
Knowing the audience.?There is a different presentation required for a PM or a CEO.? As a Data Analyst, you will be often required to answer to both.? A typical PM will want a more collaborative interaction with more scenarios spelled out and a less polished presentation.? A CEO will often be looking for a specific recommendation in a small polished presentation.?
Delivery.??Having a wonderfully accurate predictive model, that has been backtested to deliver a low RMSE, or an AB test that can increase conversion 15% without reducing sales price are all great results.? However, without a great presentation key findings may be left out of product road maps and in the backlog for months or years.
