How to Become Proficient in Analyzing Data

At this point, you might be working for an organization or are about to start a project, and you are wondering what to do first and how to keep improving your skills. Like everything in life, we have to take it step by step. This chapter will focus on a methodical approach to navigate through the ocean of data. Remember that it is easy to get lost in the different analysis techniques and methodologies, but it is imperative that you develop your own discipline and rhythm. In this book, we will give you some advice and examples on how to tackle a data project, the minimum sequential steps you can take, and a routine if you do that will serve as the basis for your future projects.

This is not a final recipe, nor is it supposed to be the norm, but it will help you create, as quickly as possible, a picture of the roadmap your data journey will take you through, thus helping you navigate it. These are minimal common-sense steps that will spark your creativity. Most of your work is not quantifiable and is not an algorithm; it takes deviations, branches out and comes back to the original point, and moves far away to a different path. This is supposed to give a sense of order to a chaotic enterprise.