Data Analysis in your fingertips.

Three years ago i took a data analyst online course that radically changed how i take data in these courses and ever since then i've been able to 10x how much i gain from not only data analyst courses but also online courses in general so in this video i'm going to break down my process of learning and how you can do say what's up guys wali here welcome back to the channel for some reason people on the internet seem to think that once you shell out some money for an online course the contents just magically transfers to your brain and you don't have to do any work to get it in it is why sometimes people feel lost after taking certain courses they just simply can't place it whether they gained anything or not i remember when i used to have my struggles there was a particular online course and i just shelled out a couple hundred dollars for and i wasn't taking it seriously so i would turn on the video lessons and then go ahead to do all that things i was basically treating the cost as if i was watching a movie to top it off the course had a limited access period of 60 days after which you lose access to the materials luckily i was able to maneuver the answers and so when i completed the entire course i started to feel guilty for not applying myself enough as i wasn't sure if i really had a grasp of what i just learned so i had to go back and study it all over again it was while i was studying all over again that i started practicing active recall which i'm going to get to in a minute but before enrolling or at the point of enrolling for an online course certainly there are some things you need to consider and put in place to ensure your learning foundation is rock solid and a number of those things are making sure that you're curious about what you're about to learn are you taking this course because someone told you to or are you taking this for your own self self-development will this course answer any of your burning questions and are you excited about the prospect of learning something new oftentimes answers to these questions lies in taking some time to scrutinize the course outline from the cost outline you can tell if it's going to be a worthy experience now based on the cost content you can then start to draft your goals i typically like to keep it simple to a one or a maximum of two goals so for example if you are taking the ibm data analyst professional certificate course which by the way if you haven't seen that review you can click on the link down in the description below the way you could draft your goal will be to ask yourself what is the number one skill you want to develop from taking this course it's like saying if you do not walk away with anything from this course what is that one thing you will be working away at the end of the cost this sort of honest introspection is important because without it's been defined clearly it's easy to get sidetracked and missed the host of information cramped into that online course so after defining your goal and diving into the course you can now start applying active recall to your learning active recall is an evidence-based studying technique where you continuously test yourself as you learn in other words as you are taking in the knowledge you are testing for your understanding immediately and at future intervals to ensure that you do not forget what you've just learned and there are three ways you can use active recall for a data analyst course the first method is what i've called data substitution data substitution is when you replace the data being used in the example task with a different data set in other words instead of using the data set provided by the course you go out you look for a different data set and you use that to replace the data set that was provided in the course now this data set could either be personalized data sets like your bank transactions examinations calls from your academic transcripts or any other data sets that you're able to lay your hands on maybe through cargo the idea is to replace the data set and see if you can come up with the same conclusions with the original data used in the task so what this does is it deepens your engagement your curiosity and your interaction with the cost feel free to apply the same principles to your capstone projects um you can easily replace the data sets and formulate your own questions to fit now the second method is by way of task comparison this is where you attempt to complete the same task or assignment using two different programs so let's say you are giving a data set in an example task and asked to perform an exploratory data analysis using python after completing the task with python out of curiosity you can then proceed to use that same data set and solve the same problem using excel that way you're not only repeating the task to better understand what you've been told to do but you're also picking up details about how to solve problems and build competency in both programs the third and the final way i use active recall is through task modification it involves tweaking steps to complete certain example tasks this step is very much complex than the previous two and will take some time to master it usually involves adding or eliminating certain details to alter the results you get so let's take a visualization task for example say in the example task the type of charts chosen was a scatter plot chart you could decide to alter that and select a waterfall chart instead and see if you could still reach the same conclusions or if it's a block of code taking out certain lines or adding new lines of code to change the results and assess the impact eventually the cost to master data analysis and get the best out of your online learnings involves repeated attempts at practice questions and lab exercises personalizing them and then formulating questions and modifying the solutions to test your knowledge as you go along finally one very important thing to do for every online course that you take it's a creative folder on your computer for each course create multiple folders within that folder and then save your end of module summary exercises answers or any other thing you find useful into each folder for each chapter or each model this will help you preserve your cost materials should in case you lose access to them after completing the online course that way if you need to refer to the course or review your summary notes later in in the future you have everything stored in one place so to wrap this all up what you must understand as the data analyst self learner taking online courses is that being actively involved in your task by way of data substitution task comparison and task modification while learning are critical so get creative look for new ways to solve old problems such that by the time you do get a job you're not just waiting to be told what to do by virtue of your learnings you are actively looking for new ways to solve not just old problems but new and exciting ones as well so i hope i have left you with a better understanding of how to get the best out of your online courses and hopefully you found this useful do smash the like button and subscribe if you haven't done so already thank you so much for watching i'll see you next video.