A curated list of resources for Excel, SQL, Tableau as well as general Data, Visualization and Statistical resources. Source: Data Analytics Resources – Ben Collins
Excel resources
- Excel keyboard shortcuts list – practice, practice, practice
- Chandoo blog – great tips beginner to advanced
- Contextures blog – great tips beginner to advanced
- Peltier Tech blog – advanced charting in Excel
- Trump Excel blog – great tips beginner to advanced
- Daily dose of Excel – advanced Excel tips including VBA
- Excel Jet – excellent resource for advanced tips
- Brad Edgar – solve your business problems using Excel
- “You suck at Excel” – excellent, advanced level Excel video (also check out the notes from that video)
- Article: No more apologies, Excel is the world’s best data tool period
- Excel Champs – a smart new blog with lots of great content from beginner to advanced
For a list of advanced Excel use-cases (functional-programming, spreadsheet standards, art, music and more!), have a look at this post.
SQL
- Recap video covering the basics of SQL
- SQL Tutorial – whilst not specific to postgreSQL, this is still a good, comprehensive reference for all of the basic SQL concepts
- SQL: Analyzing Business Metrics – learn the basics of SQL from the team at Codecademy, makers of the popular online coding platform
- The SQL Tutorial for Data Analysis – an excellent resource from the team at Mode
- PostgreSQL documentation (version 9.4)
- pgAdmin tool documentation (version 1.20)
- What postgresql has over other open source sql databases
- What postgresql has over other open source sql databases – part II
- Tutorial on making SQL queries faster
- Tutorial on adding summary statistics to your SQL tables
- Tutorial on how to calculate medians in SQL (more advanced level)
Tableau
- Official learning videos from Tableau
- Tutorial on creating a Small Multiple Masterpiece in Tableau
- Tutorial on connecting to a Custom SQL Query in Tableau
- Great visualization of NFL data
- Great visualization of Mt Everest climbing data
Statistics
Data Visualization
- Visualizing Data blog
- Flowing Data blog
- Excel chart dos and don’ts – from Jon Peltier, Excel chart master
- Five ways to lie with charts
- Finding the right color palettes for data visualization
- Deep dive into the design process for a data visualization in Scientific American
- Data is Beautiful – Reddit forum for sharing data visualizations
- Excel Charts blog and book – from Jorge Camoes
Case Studies & General Articles
- How databases work
- Data Tau – aggregator of data links
- Building data analytics at 500px
- Building data analytics at Simple
- Exploring WSJ medicare investigation with SQL
- Analyzing 1.1 billion taxi rides in NYC using postgreSQL
- Data & Code – intro to Data Journalism, telling stories with data
- Data analytics projects from other GA students
Newsletters to subscribe to
- Data is plural – curated list of interesting and esoteric datasets
- Data Elixir – weekly collection of the best data science news, resources, and inspirations
- Postgres Weekly – weekly e-mail round-up of PostgreSQL news and articles
- DB Weekly – weekly round-up of database technology news and articles
Ben’s own posts:
Popular Google Sheets & Dashboard articles:
- An introduction to Google Data Studio – Google’s latest and greatest dashboarding tool
- Starter guide to using Google Apps Script to extend your Google Sheets
- How to import social media data into a Google spreadsheet with the ImportXML function
- Histograms and Normal Distribution Curves in Google Sheets
- 10 techniques for building dashboards in Google Sheets
- Dynamic dashboard to track sales for a digital product launch
- Creating a custom Google Analytics report in a Google spreadsheet
Popular Excel articles:
- Excel tutorial: build a dynamic bump chart with Premier League data
- Excel tutorial: Building a dynamic dashboard with U.S. political data
- Excel-fficiency: 10 tips for boosting productivity in Excel
Popular Data Analysis articles, with SQL & Tableau:
- Case Study: Refugees resettling in the U.S. in 2015: where from, where to and who?
- Deep dive into Mailchimp email data using MySQL
- Learn SQL code from the comfort of a Google spreadsheet
- Multi-line chart with custom range banding in Tableau
Full archives:
- Build time-based triggers in Apps Script projects to automate programs
- Friday reading: resources and inspiration for spreadsheet buffs
- Format your Google Sheets so they look good GREAT
- 6 advanced techniques to master in Google Data Studio
- Makeover Monday Tableau Challenge: Theft in Japan
- Vlookup in Google Sheets using wildcards for partial matches
- Introduction to Google Data Studio: a free BI tool for small businesses
- Web traffic chart with dynamic banding in Google Sheets
- Creating a d3 chart with data from Google Sheets
- Multi-line chart with custom range banding in Tableau
- Excel tutorial: build a dynamic bump chart of the English Premier League
- Save time with this custom Google Sheets, Slack & Email test scoring bot
- Beginner guide to coding with Google Apps Script
- Human Trafficking Data Visualization: Reviz Project
- Spice Up Your Sheet Life: My FREE Ebook
- Makeover Monday: Wage growth in English Football leagues
- Creating dynamic charts in Google Sheets with data validation
- Premier League Social Media Dashboard in Google Sheets
- Histograms and Normal Distribution Curves in Google Sheets
- Everything you ever wanted to know about Sparklines in Google Sheets
- Excel guru Chandoo’s AMA on Reddit
- Saving data in Google Sheets with Google Apps Script
- Suicide: The Gun Issue No One Talks About
- Stand-up comedy routine involving Spreadsheets?
- Excel-fficiency: 10 tips for boosting productivity in Excel
- Refugees resettling in the U.S. in 2015: where from, where to and who?
- Using the FILTER() function to return specific values in a Google Sheet
- How to import social media data into a Google spreadsheet with the ImportXML function
- Learn SQL code from the comfort of a Google spreadsheet
- 2015 review and 2016 aims
- Data Analytics Resources
- Excel tutorial: Building a dynamic, animated dashboard for U.S. political data
- Using Google Sheets as a basic web scraper
- Hang on a Median, whaddya Mean there’s no Mode function in MySQL?
- 10 techniques for building dashboards in Google Sheets
- Multi-series d3 line chart
- How to create CSS pie charts in Geckoboard dashboards with data from Google sheets
- Creating a dynamic d3 visualization from the GitHub API
- Introduction to testing in Rails
- Building a Rails app for images using Amazon S3 and Paperclip
- Setting up a Rails model to check for “http(s)” at the front of a URL
- Fixing the N+1 problem in my Rails application
- Building a dynamic dashboard for a 3-day digital flash sale
- Create a single-letter logo using CSS
- Redesigning the Socialexis Site Using the Corsa Theme for WordPress
- Survival and retention analysis using MySQL
- Creating a histogram from MailChimp data using MySQL
- Deep dive into Mailchimp email data using MySQL
- Creating a custom Google Analytics report in a Google spreadsheet
- Creating a dynamic dashboard in Google Spreadsheets to track sales for a digital product launch
Random Musings and Curated Links By Deborah Kay 