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Data track

Data Analysis

Excel, SQL and Power BI. Four weeks of classes, face to face at USTED Campus in Kumasi or live online: clean messy data, answer business questions with formulas and pivot tables, ask a database in SQL, and build a dashboard in Power BI. Beginners welcome.

Beginner 4 weeks 8 classes Face to face or online

Overview

Ghanaian job adverts for data roles keep naming the same three tools: Excel, SQL and Power BI. Over four weeks of classes — face to face at USTED Campus in Kumasi, or live online — you learn all three on one shop's real-looking sales, so every new tool can be checked against answers you already know.

In class everyone works with Kofi's Corner Shop: three branches in Kumasi, eight products and 1,722 sales. You clean its messy till export until the numbers prove it right, answer the owner's questions with lookups, SUMIFS and pivot tables, write the same questions in SQL, and build Kofi an interactive Power BI dashboard. Then you take a new brief from raw data to findings on your own, and present it on demo day.

Every session is three hours and works the same way: you watch your instructor do it live, build along twice, try a challenge on your own, then show what you made, in a class of no more than 20 students. No maths beyond adding, multiplying and averaging.

You leave with four pieces of work to show employers: a clean dataset and a one-page Excel sales report, ten business questions answered in SQL, a Power BI dashboard, and a capstone with findings and a recommendation.

What you will be able to do

  • Set up data the way analysts do: records, fields, Excel Tables, sorting and filtering
  • Clean messy data with TRIM, Find and Replace, Remove Duplicates and IF, and prove it is right
  • Answer business questions with XLOOKUP, SUMIFS and COUNTIFS
  • Summarise data with pivot tables and charts, and write findings on a one-page report
  • Ask a database questions in SQL: SELECT, WHERE, ORDER BY, GROUP BY and JOIN
  • Build an interactive Power BI dashboard with Power Query, relationships and DAX measures
  • Take a raw brief to findings and a recommendation, and present it in two minutes

Course modules

4 modules · 12 lessons

1 Week 1 · Spreadsheet foundations Set up data the way analysts do, then clean a messy till export until its numbers prove it right.

  • What data analysts do and your first spreadsheet Free preview

    A day of Kofi's sales added up, then October's 581 sales as an Excel Table, sorted, filtered and questioned.

    Class

  • Cleaning messy data

    Blank rows, repeats, spellings, prices and dates stored as text, fixed until October matches: 581 sales and GH₵ 29,124.50.

    Class

  • Week 1 quiz: spreadsheets and clean data

    Thirteen quick questions on Sessions 1 and 2: your first spreadsheet, then cleaning messy data.

    Quiz

  • Final exam: Data Analysis

    Thirty questions on the whole course, from your first spreadsheet to Power BI and the capstone. You sit it once, in 45 minutes, on a laptop or desktop.

    Quiz
2 Week 2 · Analyse and report in Excel Bring three months of sales together with lookups and SUMIFS, then summarise them in pivot tables and a one-page report.

  • Formulas that answer questions

    XLOOKUP, VLOOKUP, SUMIFS and COUNTIFS, and a summary sheet by branch and month.

    Class

  • Pivot tables, charts and your sales report

    Pivot tables, PivotCharts and a slicer, laid out as a one-page report with three findings.

    Class

  • Week 2 quiz: formulas, pivots and the report

    Thirteen quick questions on Sessions 3 and 4: lookups, SUMIFS, pivot tables, charts and findings.

    Quiz
3 Week 3 · Ask the database: SQL Put the shop in a database and ask it the owner's questions in SQL.

  • Databases and SQL: asking questions

    Tables and keys, then SELECT, WHERE, ORDER BY and LIMIT in DB Browser for SQLite.

    Class

  • SQL: grouping and joining tables

    GROUP BY, HAVING and JOIN answering ten of the shop's business questions.

    Class

  • Week 3 quiz: SQL

    Thirteen quick questions on Sessions 5 and 6: tables and keys, SELECT and WHERE, GROUP BY and JOIN.

    Quiz
4 Week 4 · Dashboards and demo day Build Kofi an interactive Power BI dashboard, then take a new brief from raw data to findings and present it.

  • Power BI: your first dashboard

    Power Query, relationships, three DAX measures and an interactive dashboard with slicers.

    Class

  • Capstone and demo day

    A real brief from raw data to a dashboard, three findings and a recommendation, presented in two minutes.

    Project milestone

What you walk away with

Four pieces of work to show employers: a clean dataset and one-page Excel sales report, ten business questions answered in SQL, an interactive Power BI dashboard, and a capstone with findings and a recommendation.

  • Excel
  • SQL
  • SQLite
  • Power BI
  • Power Query
  • DAX

What you need before you start

  • A laptop and its charger, brought to every class
  • Excel 2016 or newer, or Microsoft 365; without it, the free Excel for the web works in weeks 1 and 2
  • A Windows laptop for week 4: Power BI Desktop runs only on Windows
  • No experience needed, and no maths beyond adding, multiplying and averaging

Cohorts and schedule

No cohorts scheduled yet

We are planning the next run of this course. Tell us you are interested and we will let you know the dates first.