Data Analytics Course Outline

1. Introduction to Data Analytics

Data is everywhere. Data is constantly being generated in all forms - surveys, interviews,
social media platforms, sensors around us or even on us. We want to be able to fully
capitalize on this treasure of data to make better, more informed, data driven decisions. The
ability to capitalize on data is crucial to make effective decisions in today’s day and age.

However, organisations are finding it tough to navigate their way through all this huge
amounts of data coming in from multiple sources. Data Analysts play an important role in
firms. No matter the size of the firm, data analytics will play a key role especially for strategic
growth, aiding the firm to make better decisions and identify new opportunities.

Python is one of the most popular languages for data analytics and data science. Many
renowned companies are using python to build up their digital capabilities. Tableau is
another necessary platform for data analysts. There is an increasing demand for
professionals with Tableau dashboarding and Storytelling skills.

In this course we will also bring in finance specific use cases to demonstrate how a data
analyst can value add in the financial industry.

2. Course Description
This course is designed to introduce fundamental data analytics skills and principles to
analysts looking to enhance their skill-sets or newcomers to the data industry.

After this course, students will be equipped for data analytics roles, with the financial industry
as case studies. Students will also learn how to utilize data to analyze metrics and
outcomes, think critically and build storytelling abilities to work towards data driven
decisions.

3. Learning Objectives
Upon completion of this course, the student should be able to:

● Build adequate knowledge of Python for analyzing data

● Identify potential areas to apply data analytics using the financial industry as case
studies

● Identify the different sources of data and basic data quality standards

● Collect data using appropriate techniques

● Ensure the sufficiency of the data for conducting data analytics

● Understand the different data wrangling techniques to prepare the data

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 ● Understand the different data mining techniques and how to apply them

● Identify and use the right business intelligence tool to extract meaningful insights
from the data

● Apply the right visualisation for the different types of data

● Build strong storytelling skills using dashboards as an aid

4. Materials
Required:
- Personal laptop
- Anaconda with Python 3 installed
- Tableau Public Account

Supplementary reading:
- https://www.python.org/
- https://www.tableau.com/

5. Course Schedule

Lesson Topic Course Agenda Duration

1 Fundamentals & ● Course introduction 3 hours

Data Analytics ● What is Data Analytics?
Landscape ● Why is Data Analytics important?
● Data Analytics objectives and case studies in
finance industry
● Different Types of Analytics
● Different Sources and Types of Data
● Data Quality Standards

2 Introduction to ● Introduction to Jupyter notebook 3 hours

Python ● Introduction to basics of Python
● Primitive Data Types
● Data Structures
● Conditionals
● For loops, while loops

3 Python ● Python Functions 3 hours

Essentials I ● Pandas Introduction
● Numpy Introduction

4 Python ● Fundamentals of Statistics 3 hours

Essentials II ● Basic statistics using python
● Exploratory Data Analysis

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5 Python ● Introduction to Data Visualisation 3 hours
Essentials III ● Identifying the right chart to use
● Seaborn Introduction
● Introduction to Web Scraping

6 Introduction to ● Introduction to Database Concepts 3 hours

SQL ● Database Terminology
● Primary keys and Foreign keys
● Data Types
● Introduction to SQL

7. SQL Essentials ● SQL Syntax and Statements 3 hours

● Working with Databases
● SQL Best Practices

8. Data ● Different Types of Dashboards 3 hours

Visualisation and ● Dashboard Metrics
Storytelling ● Data Visualisation Landscape
● Introduction to Tableau
● Data Manipulation
● Vizzes & Charts
● Dashboard Creation & Formatting
● Dashboard Publishing
● Storytelling skills

6. Capstone Project Outline

As part of the course, students are to work towards a final Capstone project, which may be a
case study of the student’s choice in options below.

Choose ONE case study to focus on:

Case Study 1: Banking Industry

* Data is provided (https://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/Bank+Marketing )

Background Info:

Marketing is one of the key ways to help a bank raise awareness on their services to the
public. In this case study, we want to identify how effective the past marketing campaigns
were in order to better strategize for future marketing campaigns.

Task:
The data provided is related with direct marketing campaigns (phone calls) of a Portuguese
banking institution. Using the data provided, analyse the historical patterns of the
effectiveness of previous marketing plans.

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Some helper questions:

● What is the profile of people who are responsive to the marketing campaigns?
● What is the profile of people who are not responsive to the marketing campaigns?
You may choose to supplement the existing data with additional data sources where
applicable.

Case Study 2: Stocks Analysis

*Data for this case study is not provided. Students are to follow lesson 4’s API code within
Notebook 4.0 to get the stocks data of their preferred company for the timeline they’re
interested in.
Background Info:
Information is vital in the stock market. Some assume that knowing the statistics of
a market lets us beat it and earn money. The reality can be quite different.

Task:
Collect stock data of a preferred industry and conduct some basic analysis. Using the data
provided, analyse how the global pandemic, (i.e. COVID-19) can affect the stock
market, and identify some key insights.

Some helper questions:

● Which are the companies that have been harmed the most by the COVID-19
Pandemic?
● Which are the companies that have benefited the most from the COVID-19
Pandemic?
● How to invest during the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Case Study 3: Insurance Premium Data

* Data is provided (https://www.kaggle.com/simranjain17/insurance)

Background Info:

The insurance industry is driven by the simple fact that the capital spent by the insurance
company in response to beneficiary claims should not exceed customer premium. The
higher the difference between the approved customer claims and total premium received,
equates to higher profits. Generally the more data we have on a customer, the better we are
able to understand their needs, as well as assess the risks involved in insuring them.

Task:
Using the data provided, analyse the premium prices charged to customers.

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Some helper questions:

● Who is charged a higher premium?

● Who is charged a lower premium?
● Who are the main customers?
You may choose to supplement the existing data with additional data sources where
applicable.

For your final project you should

● Prepare a 10 page slide deck in response to one of the three case studies, and show
how you address them through your data analytics techniques.

● Your slide deck should cover the following:

1. Define your business objective or problem statement and identify relevant

metrics
2. Identify clearly the sources of data and steps taken extract the data from the
sources
3. Collect, consolidate and organise the data
4. Exploratory data analysis to ensure the data integrity and data quality is
sufficient to conduct analysis
5. Working Tableau Dashboard with a minimum of 4 different chart types that
help address the problem statement
6. Show proper data analysis to approach the chosen case study
7. Using the dashboard, demonstrate how you can derive data driven decisions

● Design a dashboard that can visualize your data. The dashboard should show at
least two different charts (line charts, maps, bar charts, etc.) and identify 2
recommendations or 2 insights based on your defined problem statement. Focus on
the organization of the dashboard, the use of colors, the labeling of the axes, to
ensure it looks professional.

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