Aiming to be a Data Analyst, here’s the math you need to know

It’s time for the next installment in my story series — outlining the skills you need to be a Data Visualization and Analytics consultant specializing in Tableau (and originally Alteryx). If you’re new to the series, check out the first story here, which outlines the mind map of skills I’ll be reviewing.

Today I’d like to talk about how mathematics and statistics play a part in the job. Now if you pause to look around, you’ll notice that most (not all, but quite a few) jobs that are related to data ask for someone to have a higher education degree in a STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics). As someone with a degree in mathematics, I find this to be quite humorous, because the majority of math that anyone would be required to do on the job is at an Algebra or Statistics level, which are traditionally covered in more detail in high school and not college. I can only assume as it relates to math, that there’s a presumed level of problem solving and applied math problem solving (aka word problems) that you’re exposed to in higher education and that can be helpful for the role.

First off, what exactly are Algebra and Statistics? Algebra at it’s heart is all about working with both known and unknown variables and exploring relationships among them. In it’s simplest form it’s solving for the equation of a line, y=mx+b, or maybe even more trivial, solving for a variable like 2x=8. It works with all the major mathematical operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication…