Python is a flexible tool for exploring data and automating repetitive analysis. This proposed beginner course introduces the programming concepts most relevant to simple business datasets.

Progress from reading and transforming data to asking useful questions and producing clear summaries. The emphasis is understandable code and good analytical habits rather than advanced software engineering.

Proposed course topics

• Understand variables, collections, basic logic and common Python syntax.
• Work with tabular files and introductory data-frame concepts.
• Identify missing, inconsistent and duplicate records.
• Summarise groups, calculate useful measures and explore patterns.
• Create simple charts with appropriate labels and context.
• Organise and explain an analysis so another person can follow it.

Putting the skills into practice

Outline a notebook that imports a fictional sales dataset, cleans common issues, calculates category-level measures and presents two findings with suitable charts.

Who this course is for

Aspiring data analysts, students, graduates, finance professionals and career changers learning their first programming language.