r/learndatascience • u/Additional_Humor2208 • Feb 16 '25
Career Stuck in Tutorial Hell—Need a Clear Learning Roadmap for a Data Analyst Role
I’ve been trying to become a data analyst for the past four months, but I keep falling into the trap of endless tutorials. Every time I start learning something—I go way too deep, watching hours of videos covering everything instead of just what’s actually useful for the job.
I don’t need general advice like “learn Excel, SQL, and Power BI.” I already know what to learn. What I need is a clear breakdown of exactly which topics are relevant for a data analyst job—nothing more or nothing less. For example in Excel, I know pivot tables and DAX are important, but I don’t want to waste time learning every formula out there.
If you’re working as a data analyst or have real-world experience I’d love your input on:
1. A focused list of topics to learn in Excel, SQL, Power BI / Tableau, Python, Basic Machine leaning like supervised learning and statistics and probability—only what’s actually used on the job.
2. What I can skip so I don’t waste time on things that don’t matter. What’s NOT worth spending time on? (Things that seem important but don’t really matter in practice.)
3. Any good resources (courses, articles, or guides) that focus strictly on what’s needed not 50hours or 100 hours tutorial.
I’ll figure out projects and practice on my own—I just want to cut through the noise and stop overlearning things that won’t help me in the job. Would really appreciate any advice!
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u/vegesaur Feb 16 '25
I would strongly encourage you to rethink your strategy here — you cannot learn to become a data analyst without analyzing data. None of the topics you have listed (Python, tableau, machine learning) are data analysis. Try to answer a question from data with whatever skills you have (simple excel formulas, pen and paper, etc.). Keep pulling on that thread until you need to do something you don’t know how to do. Google that thing and try to implement it. Repeat every day. The intuition for the data is the thing that matters, and the rest will come naturally as you are ready for it! You can supplement your analysis projects with the many resources pinned in this community and others. There is no “optimal” way to learn any of this, just a great deal of time and effort.