IBM Data Analyst Professional Certificate
The IBM Data Analyst Professional Certificate is a program offered by IBM, currently available on Coursera and EDX, enabling a student to gain a qualification that will help them into a career path as a data analyst, and can help them move forward in the field of cyber security at the same time.
What is Data Analytics
Data Analytics is often considered a subset of Data Science, with it being a more specialized approach to analysing information or data, with a view to enhancing and organizations ability to interpret that data.
Every business and organization of any size has access to a vast range of information concerning its users and clients. Interpreting that data in a meaningful way has become a hugely important part of their business, meaning there are many opportunities for careers in data analysis.
IBM Data Analyst Professional Certificate Reviews
Before embarking on the certificate, it is a good to look at reviews and glean what information you can about the course prior to starting it. Reviews can be slightly tricky but there is a way to use them in a constructive manner.
Looking at negative reviews is actually quite a good start. People may have complaints for many reasons, but if there are a number of complaints relating to the same issue then it may merit further investigation.
Equally they’re just be 1 person with a negative review, which flags something up that may be of important to a perspective student.
Coursera has its own review page for each course, which can be accessed through the various module pages. The fact that these reviews contain negative reviews as well as positive ones is a good sign of their independence.
Things to look out for in reviews are whether or not the module content is kept up to date, how good the support system is by way of helping people who may be struggling, and how interactive the course is or not.
Reviews point out areas of the course that some people are unhappy with but maybe okay with others.
It is important for any perspective student to understand what their own needs and expectations are from any course, and then see how this particular one matches up to them.
IBM Data Analyst Professional Certificate Cost
Coursera has a standard approach to the cost of all of its courses. There is a free seven day period, after which a monthly enrolment fee is charged, currently £39 /$39. ( July 2023)
This means that the overall cost of the course will be determined by how long it takes the student to complete it. The seven day free period allows a student to view material and see if it’s appropriate for what they want from the course.
Equally it offers the advantage that if a student decides of the few weeks that the course is not for them they can opt out without losing a significant amount of money.
EDX has a slightly different approach in that it charges a flat fee of £684, currently reduced to £616 (July 2023). They also have a 14-day refund policy, meaning that the material can be browsed during that time to see how relevant it is to any prospective student.
IBM Data Analyst Professional Certificate and Salary
Coursera indicate on the certificate home page that the average salary for a data analyst is currently between $81,000 and $.107,000.
These will be average figures based on salaries across the USA . It should be noted that the IBM data analyst certificate is most likely to be seen as evidence of study and knowledge, but that often salaries are also as dependent if not more so on relevant experience as well.
Going by salary figures can be a bit misleading, as they can be significant differences depending on the type of industry the student is intending to work in, as well as significant geographical differences and the prevailing option of hybrid working as well.
In addition to salaries, many companies offer additional benefits which of themselves can be at important to the individual as the actual annual salary.
IBM Data Analyst Professional Certificate Syllabus
This IBM professional certificate is made up of mine individual courses, with each course consisting of a number of individual modules. The courses are listed below :
- Introduction to Data Analytics
- Excel basics for Data Analysis
- Data visualization and dashboards with Excel and Cognos
- Python for Data Science, AI and Development
- Databases and SQL for Data Science with Python
- Data Analysis with Python
- Data Visualization with Python
- IBM data analyst Capstone Project
These courses are designed to give a basic introduction to the whole field of data Analytics, describe the different types of data structures and sources of data, and go through the various stages of how data it’s collected, mined, visualized and ultimately analysed.
All the courses should help someone differentiate between the different roles involved in analysing data such as a data engineer, a data analyst, a data scientist, a business analyst and a business intelligence analyst.
Is the IBM Data Analyst Professional Certificate worth it?
This is a question frequently asked by people, simply because of the commitment that is required to complete the course, in terms of both time and money.
Part of the answer lies in comparing this course to others offered on data analysis, and comparing both the cost and the quality of the syllabus. The value of the certificate will also depend on someone’s existing knowledge of Data Analytics and how much this course adds to that and therefore it’s subsequent value.
One other thing that people can do is to check current vacancies for data analysts on different job sites and see if the job requirements match the content that the syllabus defines for the course.
