NOTE: If you are looking forward to enrolling in Business Analyst Nondegree on Udacity or any other Nanodegree Program, you can click on this link to get $50 off.

Recently I have been working as a Business Intelligence Analyst till March 2019 when I left my job as I am moving to Washington DC to pursue my MS in Data Science in the month of August. I wanted to do something in the meantime when I got an opportunity to work with Udacity as a mentor for Business Analyst Nanodegree. Currently, its been 1 month working as a mentor for BAND with Udacity and I wanted to share my feedback about the Business Analyst Nanodegree so that people interested in learning about Business Analytics can make up their mind if they want to enroll in this Udacity’s BAND(Business Analyst Nanodegree).

I have been a student with Udacity since 2016 when I was in college. I did my Front-End Development Nanodegree and Predictive Analytics for Business Nanodegree Program (PAND Review and Hand Written Notes) and also got my very first job just after completion of my under graduation with the help from Udacity. I have explored so many online learning platforms including edX, Udacity, Coursera, Khan Academy, Simplilearn, Udemy, MVA, etc and I found Udacity and Coursera to be the best. Udemy also offers good courses for very cheap prices, but the kind of personal level support you get from Udacity is exceptional.

BAND Review:

Business Analytics Nanodegree is best suited for those students who want to switch or get into the field of Data Science. BAND does not require any prerequisites to start the course. The detailed syllabus for the course can be seen here:

BAND Syllabus

As you can see in the syllabus there are 5 Projects to complete in the Nanodegree which is divided into 5 different Chapters.

Chapter 1 (Introduction To Nanodegree Program)

This is basically the Introduction to the Nanodegre Program. In this Chapter, Orientation is done to explain the services of Udacity and Introduction to Business Analytics. Project 1 here is Know as Working with data where you have to learn how to look at the Data and Data Visualization and come up with insights from the same.

As a mentor for the BAND I had to conduct the weekly webinars for the students in my Cohort, here is my webinar for Chapter 1:

BAND Welcome Webinar

I am no expert in making video lectures. These webinars were very casual. I understand the quality of these videos could have been better. Udacity videos are not to be judged from these webinar as there videos are very professional.

Chapter 2 (Introduction To Data)

Chapter 2 is known as Introduction to Data. There are 8 lessons in this Chapter which are as follows:

  1. Descriptive Statistics I
  2. Descriptive Statistics II
  3. Spreadsheets 1: Getting Started
  4. Spreadsheets 2: Manipulate Data
  5. Spreadsheets 3: Analyze Data
  6. Spreadsheets 4: Visualize Data
  7. Business Metrics
  8. Excel Modelling

Chapter 2 starts with the concept of Descriptive Statistics where the mathematics of Mean, Mode, Median, Variance, Standard Deviation, and Five Number Summary are discussed. This is followed by the concept of a spreadsheet like What are spreadsheets? What are the uses of the spreadsheet? How to calculate Descriptive Statistics Values in spreadsheet tools like Excel? How to perform Data Analysis and Visualization in a spreadsheet? How to perform forecasting in Excel?

Here are the YouTube videos of the webinar I had for Chapter 2:

Descriptive Statistics Concepts And Applications
Data Analysis using Spreadsheet

Chapter 3 (SQL For Data Analysis)

Chapter 3 contains 5 lessons out of which 2 are optional and 3 are mandatory, the five lessons in this chapter are as follows:

  1. Basic SQL
  2. SQL Joins
  3. SQL Aggregations
  4. SQL Subqueries and Temporary Tables (Advanced)
  5. SQL Data Cleaning (Advanced)

Chapter 3 starts with an introduction to Basic SQL and then moves to more advanced SQL Joins and Aggregation functions, it also covers advanced Subqueries, Temporary tables and Data Cleaning in SQL.

Here are the links to the webinars I made for SQL:

SQL Introduction Webinar
SQL Aggregation Functions Webinar

Chapter 4 (Career Services)

Career Services lessons are mainly intended to help you improve your LinkedIn profile and your Resume to make you job-ready. There are two projects in the lesson, one for improving your LinkedIn profile and another to create a 1-page resume.



Chapter 5 (Data Visualization)

In the process of Data Analysis, once you are done with your Data Analysis part, you need to represent that insight in the visual form to the people in the company and that is when data visualization comes into play. It is the most crucial part of Data Analysis and Udacity has used Tableau to teach how to make awesome Data Visualizations. These are the following lessons in this chapter:

  1. Introduction to Data Visualization
  2. Design
  3. Data Visualizations in Tableau
  4. Make Dashboards and Stories in Tableau

This is the last chapter of the Nanodegree program, the final project wants you to build interactive dashboards with Tableau and use them to discover and communicate insights from data.

Here is the link to the Webinar I did for Introduction to Tableau:

While I was mentoring BAND and the cohort was almost done with the Nanodegree program, a lot of students asked me which Nanodegree should they pursue after this. I think there are two options after this:

If you are someone who wants to be a Data Analyst or a Business/Business Intelligence Analyst after completing the Nanodegree, then I will suggest you go for Data Analyst Nanodegree but if you are someone interested in Machine Learning and wants to pursue your career in this field, then Predictive Analytics should be a good start as it teaches you about predictive algorithms and how to use them in real-world scenarios. For someone coming from a Development background and wants to continue working on the technologies but on the Data Science side, then Data Engineer ND should be the best.

The best option would be to complete all the ND programs, as all of them are important if you love Data Science.

Alternate Courses To Business Analyst Nanodegree:

Udacity does offer a lot of personal level support like mentor support, 1:1 support, career support, etc, but a lot of people find their ND programs to be very costly and look for an alternate option. Here, I have mentioned some of the best alternate and cheaper courses to BAND available on some of the best MOOC websites:

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