A Hierarchy of Ways to Leave Healthcare for Data Analytics, Part 1

By Lauren Rosenthal and Kimberly Richey

Part 1: Dip Your Toe In

Curious about data analytics? Want to know what SQL looks like? Dying to learn what a query is? There’s a plethora of resources online, both free and paid, and the choice of how and where to learn can be overwhelming. Maybe you watch some videos. You could check out some Reddit threads. The list is endless, but where do you begin? Over the next three days we are going to take you through the variety of ways you can learn about data analytics and see if it’s for you.

If you’re just beginning to think about making the shift, we recommend checking out some free resources to get you started. They’ll allow you to dip your toe in the water, so to speak, and get a feel for what data analysts actually do and what skills they use.

Do:

W3Schools: W3Schools’ tutorial is a great place to start. It breaks skills down into small chunks and allows you to practice as skills get progressively more challenging. W3Schools touches on some topics that other tutorials may skip over and gives a great introduction into what SQL is, what SQL can do, and where/how it might be used. 

SQLZoo: SQLZoo’s tutorial allows you to learn SQL in stages, with quizzes after each new concept. It starts at the very beginning with learning SELECT statements, and progresses to more advanced concepts. SQLZoo has practice problems within each lesson, in addition to quizzes at the end lesson. It also has separate assessments for more advanced users. 

SQLBolt: SQLBolt has 19 lessons that, again, start with the basic SELECT statement. Their interactive tutorial covers the basics of writing queries (including filtering and sorting, using JOINs, aggregating, etc.) as well as creating, altering, and dropping tables, and inserting, updating, and deleting rows. At the end of each lesson, there are between 2 and 5 tasks to complete before moving on to the next lesson.

Mode: Mode’s SQL tutorial states that it is “meant for aspiring analysts who have used Excel a little bit but have no coding experience.” It starts at the very beginning with covering topics such as “What is SQL?”, “What’s a database?”, and perhaps the question that’s on the forefront of every aspiring data analyst’s mind, “How do I pronounce SQL?” (It’s either S-Q-L or sequel, for those who can’t wait to find out). The Mode tutorial is a little bit different than the others mentioned so far because it is meant to be completed using Mode, which itself is an analytics platform. Mode has practice problems within each lesson that use Mode’s Public Warehouse datasets to complete. You do need to have a (free) Mode account to complete the tutorial but as a cool and useful feature, all of your queries are automatically saved so you can refer back to them. Lauren is a big fan of Mode’s SQL tutorial and has completed most of it herself.

Khan Academy: Khan Academy’s Intro to SQL: Querying and managing data is a great introduction course. It gives you the opportunity to create tables, insert data, query and aggregate data, use relational queries, and more. The course is self-paced and set up so that you watch a video, do some guided challenges, and create projects at the end of each lesson.

There are so many great free tutorials out there and it’s not possible to cover them all! These are just some of the tutorials that we’ve had the opportunity to try ourselves. 

Watch:

Alex the Analyst on YouTube: Alex the Analyst (aka Alex Freberg) is a data analyst who started his YouTube channel to help others break into the field. His videos cover an enormous range of topics from SQL basics, intermediate and advanced SQL tutorials, data analyst portfolio projects, data analyst interview questions and resumes, and more. Alex is truly a gem and explains advanced information very well.

@charlotte_chz on TikTok: Charlotte got her start as a data analysis content creator on TikTok, posting quick videos about what data analysts do, how to land a data analysis job, the average data analyst salaries, and more. You’ll read more about her later in the week!

@anniesanalytics on TikTok: Annie is starting her own data analysis journey and has gained over 24k followers on TikTok by documenting it as she goes! Annie has great information for aspiring data analysts and has been transparent about her own successes and challenges. As a bonus - Annie is also finishing up her occupational therapy degree and while I’m not sure if she plans to go in the direction of healthcare data analytics, it’s cool she comes from a healthcare background too!

There are plenty of other YouTube channels, TikTokers, and more that you can watch or follow to get a good idea of what goes into being a data analyst.

Read:

There are tons of Reddit threads, blogs, guides, and more that you can look at to get a feel for what data analysts actually do, how they feel about their jobs, and how to get into the field. As for Reddit, I’ve used:

• r/dataanalysis
• r/dataisbeautiful
• r/datascience
• r/datasets

Coming Up Next:

Part 2:

Choose Your Own Adventure

Part 3:

Need More Structure?

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