If you want to learn data analysis, don't hurry to learn programming skills, first learn excel, really learn excel, be proficient in operation, do common function formulas, pivot tables, filter, sort, chart drawing, then learn SQL, and finally learn R/python. As the saying goes, "Before you learn to walk, you should learn to run".

First of all, Excel is our most commonly used data analysis and processing tool. When we start learning Excel, we must first learn to walk. Excel is very rich in functions, which can basically cover those functions that we will learn in other software (SQL, R, Python) later. Some people may ask, since Excel is so powerful, why should we learn other tools?

This is because Excel operates in the form of menus, and it is difficult to realize automation and functional reuse. Of course, you can also do it through VBA, which means programming. However, because VBA is a language that can only be used in office software, the input cost of learning is not proportional to the output income, so learning is not recommended.

In addition, when dealing with large data sets, Excel has poor performance and often crashes. (Although Excel20 13 and above claimed that it could hold 100+ 10000 records, tens of thousands of data began to get stuck).

Of course, Excel is not enough. SQL is the basis of data analysis.

The objective reason is that most data analysis work requires SQL skills. The reason for this phenomenon is that in order to ensure the security of data and the convenience of management, all data are stored in the database, and SQL language is needed to extract and query data from the database. Some companies use SQL language for data analysis.

Another reason is that even if you learn other tools first, such as R, Python and even Spark, you will find that you have to learn SQL in the end. If you learn SQL first, you can understand many concepts before learning more complex tools such as R, Python and Spark. It is helpful for future study. Just like building a house. Lay a good foundation first, and then build it layer by layer. Of course, there are also great gods who repair houses from top to bottom. That kind of house is not an ordinary house, and it has nothing to do with us ordinary people.

Of course, if you think learning programming is too complicated, and you want to do beautiful visualization quickly without writing a programming language, then try Smartbi, which is free to use and easy to operate.