Curriculum
Two months • Weekend evenings • Excel → SQL → Power BI → Intro to Python & R • Project-driven
Week 1
Excel Foundations — Cleaning & Exploration
Spreadsheet fundamentals for analysis and quick EDA.
- Data types, formatting, cleaning (TRIM, CLEAN, Text-to-Columns)
- Sorting, filtering, conditional formatting
- Descriptive stats & quick charts
Outcome: produce a tidy, analysis-ready worksheet.
Week 2
Excel for Analysis — Lookups, Pivots & Dashboards
- LOOKUP/XLOOKUP, IF/IFS, DATE/TEXT functions
- PivotTables, PivotCharts, slicers
- Mini-project: KPI summary dashboard
Outcome: a shareable Excel dashboard from raw data.
Week 3
SQL Essentials — Querying & Joins
- SELECT, WHERE, ORDER BY, LIMIT
- INNER/LEFT/RIGHT joins, GROUP BY & HAVING
- Schema & ERD basics
Outcome: business questions answered with join-based queries.
Week 4
SQL for Analytics — Windows & CTEs
- Window functions (ROW_NUMBER, RANK, LAG/LEAD)
- CTEs & subqueries, CASE expressions
- Mini-project: retention & cohort KPIs
Outcome: an insights script producing analyst-grade metrics.
Week 5
Power BI — Modeling & Visual Design
- Import, transform, star schema & relationships
- Visual best practices, bookmarks & drill-through
Outcome: a clean, documented data model + first report page.
Week 6
Power BI — DAX, Time Intelligence & Publishing
- Measures vs. calculated columns, CALCULATE & filter context
- YTD/MTD, rolling metrics, what-if parameters
- Power BI Service: workspaces, sharing & refresh
Outcome: a multi-page KPI dashboard deployed to the Service.
Week 7
Intro to Python — Pandas for Analysts
- Environment & notebooks (Jupyter)
- pandas: loading, cleaning, joining, aggregating
- Quick visuals with matplotlib
Outcome: a reproducible notebook that mirrors your Excel flow.
Week 8
Intro to R + Capstone Presentation
- tidyverse basics (dplyr, tidyr) & ggplot quick charts
- Reproducible reporting (R Markdown / Quarto overview)
- Capstone: unify SQL → BI → Python/R into a case study
Outcome: finished portfolio project + presentation.