Become a Data Analyst

Data Analyst Nanodegree opens a different world of experience and analysis.
Learning has no limitation, especially with ages. I did not know what to expect and thought it would be very hard for me to take the courses because I have no experiences in data programming and I am "too old" to learn. However, Udacity really opens my eyes and opportunities as I learn so much from class exercises, the forum and especially from our awesome mentors. The courses are very exciting, using real cases, things that happened around you, for you to examine, analyze using the new techniques, tools that you learn from each lesson/class. There are so much to learn and it seems there's not enough hours in a day to learn them all. Be patience, consistent and perseverance, you will be surprise how much and how fast you can learn. I want to motivate my children, nieces and nephews, even brothers and sisters to try it. If I can do it, they can too.

Data Analysis and R? Go for it!
This was the first course I took since I started thinking about analytics and R. A fellow Data Scientist recommended it to me. I was bit surprised when I saw the level as Intermediate still decided to pursue. Duration of the course is 2 months and that's what it took me to complete it with 2-3 hours a day.
About the course -
If you are new to R, it will not teach you the ABC of it, but believe me I never felt the need of it though the only programming language I knew was COBOL. It is a primarily an analytics course and gets one well versed with the Data Analytics concepts and uses R as a tool to do that. The name it apt - Exploratory Data Analysis "using R"! The questions are interesting, having "no right or wrong answer" (as they keep saying :), and will make you think.
1. The course directly takes you to the next level of R without knowing much about it and you learn it well. After completing his course, I took the Coursera's R programming to learn the basics of the language. The basic difference was Coursera course is to be an R programmer while Udacity's course revolves around Data analytics, playing with data, visualization, a bit of statistics.
2. Plots and visualizations was never so much of fun. Few days after this course, I read somewhere that teaching R should be started with ggplot and I very much agree.
3. The course is self-paced, has tiny modules and heap of quizzes in between which really helps understand the concepts.
I've become a fan of Udacity and have done multiple course around statistics after this.

Foreign Mentors, Unfair Project Submission Guidelines, Kept Charging Me After I Quit
I'll keep this brief and exclude some of the positives of the program in order to prove my point.

1) Mentors come once a week, which isn't so bad. The first mentor I had was Indian with a very thick accent. The second mentor I had was aggressive in explaining things and winded the conversation down to orders or instructions on how to approach the Nanodegree.

2) The projects, which can be complex use of frameworks, expect you to recreate on your own. I submitted a completed project after completing the tutorial and was accused of plagiarism.

3)I left the program, but they kept charging my credit card. I had to call my bank to cancel relations with Udacity.

Data analyst Nanodegree
I have done the Nanodegree and lots of other Udacity courses.

Pro :
I think the degree is a well organised to the world of data science and data analytics. The cost is affordable if you take into account the project portfolio you are building. Really the project review by the coaches are a real bonus to go more deeply into the concepts of the courses.

The content itself is excellent. Clearly the makers of the individual courses have thought backwards from "What do we want our students to know?" and "What it means to be a data analyst?" and "What the industry is needed?"

The lectures are engaging. The exercises are at an appropriate level of difficulty and are well-motivated. Each of the projects completed as part of the Nanodegree are interesting, instructive. Almost all video are followed by small exercices that I think are key to the learning process.

Along with the degree, there are side activities like webcast, forum and even some courses on how to effectively create a resume and project portfolio.

Cons :
The nanodegree program, along with all nontraditional certification programs (such as the Coursera Data Science Specialization), is unproven. Employers may simply not know enough about the program to trust it. This is even more true for people out of US (in my case from Europe)
The program require a basic understanding of some math and statistical concept.

I think this program can benefit anyone interested to get a good introduction to data science or make a career transition to this world.

Neat video lectures with lots of hands-on experience
I think one of the important aspects that Udacity shines at is their video lectures quality and the way they present content. The fact that there is no slides in the video lectures makes you always pay attention to what the lecturer is saying or drawing on the board.

Now for the actual nanodegree review. There are some courses which i find really important and i benefited from those courses 100%, Those courses are 'Data analysis with R' & 'Data visualization using d3.js'. I think the data analysis with R course is very very detailed about how you should think when making exploratory data analysis, what and what not to do and when to do it and how. On the other hand if you are looking for such detailed information, you would be a little disappointed when it comes to the 'Intro to machine learning' Course. The course gives you less detailed information about how each learning algorithm works under the hood, but it also informs you about the strengths and weaknesses of each algorithm and how to tweak each on to fit your needs. That being said it is the most hard-working course of them all. As you will be trying each algorithm you learned by hand and see how well it performs on real data sets.

Another big + for this nanodegree is the project submission/review system. The review that you get after a project submission has a plethora of detailed comments about what you did wrong or suggestions to some piece of code a lot better.

Bringing the Data Science market closer to you! :D
This program provided me knowledge over a lot of very important subjects related to the field (Statistics, Data Wrangling, Exploratory Data Analysis, Machine Learning, Data Visualization, and others) by going through each of them in a very good pace, for starters or mid-level people. Here I had the opportunity to put my hands on projects that, from my perspective, are very close to what we can find in the market, and that is great!

Those projects requirements make you put a lot of effort so you can fill them. If you want, you can check the projects that I developed so far by taking a look at my GitHub (https://github.com/brunoassisp).

The Nanodegree program has a goal of bringing the market closer to you, and I feel that this has been accomplished! I could venture to say that if it wasn't for this course I wouldn't be capable of being working as a Data Analyst today.

I didn't finish the course yet, but I have more than 85% done now and I feel a lot more comfortable on working with Python (Pandas/Numpy) and R, for instance.

Another great point about the Nanodegree program is that I could increase my networking by meeting a lot of nice people willing to share knowledge and give support. Besides that, the mentorship is also great! It really complements the program.

In a nutshell, I could say that the Nanodegree went beyond my expectations! :)

It is actually MUCH better than I had hoped
I was skeptical when I enrolled in UDACITY's Data Analysis Nano Degree Program but not only have they provided the experience they said they would they have steadily made improvements since I enrolled. How many times in your life have you had that experience? Here are SOME of the improvements they have made while I have been enrolled. Initially one could get one-on-one help but usually it was 1 to 2 days out but at least was a video chat.
This was great. I had tried a competitor's course and sometime s one just cannot figure out why something is not working. But not with Udacity. Then they scrapped that and instituted a MENTOR program. Here one could instant message someone who would get back to you in a few hours. Then they scrapped that and now offer LIVE HELP. It is a chat box that one types the gist of your question into. In less than 10 min, often in 3 min , someone comes on. Usually they can immediately figure out your mistake ( it seems students make a finite # of errors) but if they cant they ask you to copy and paste your code. And if they still cannot figure it out, i.e., if you have really made a mess of things they do a screen sharing session to get you back on the rails . Don't make a mistake. Just sign up for Udacity.

Udacity Data Analyst Nanodegree Review
If you are interested to know more about Data Analytics, then Udacity's Nanodegree programs are the best way to start off. It's just that their instructional design is great, it also makes sure to deep explore the landscape of Data Analysis and helps you to be passionate.

The instructors are just great, with additional services like One-to-One mentoring, Active forums, Career Advice and CV analysis -- the course is worth buying it. There are Alumini programs to bring like minded people together, once you graduate. It's just amazing.

It's a great way to start off Data Analyst ND programs if you are a beginner or a novice. Once you are enrolled, share your work on projects through blogs, you can also write blogs about new things learnt that are profoundly interesting to you. Though this is optional, doing so helps you not to lose interest and also helps you to be a better learned person. Make sure to share your experiences -- Udacity takes it seriously to change their design based on feedback -- to bring best learning experiences.

World class learning
Udacity offers a truly unique mix in their teaching methods. There are some cases where a lecturer is talking at you, but they last between 2 and 3 minutes before you are hands on the keyboard trying code again. Sometimes they have you read a few paragraphs, sometimes its completing a block of code or a math problem. Occasionally, they'll have you write a whole function. They teach both theory and practice as well.

On top of this, their live chat and forum mentors are top notch. They obviously care about their topics and their students and go out of their way to ensure understanding. The biggest unexpected for me was the way the project reviews are done. After completing a project and turning it in to end a class, a reviewer will pick it up and examine it thoroughly, offering feedback on nearly every rubric point. I learned as much through these reviews as I did during the class.

DAND - a great course even for absolute beginners!
I am still in the process of completing Term 1 of Data Analyst Nanodegree at Udacity. The experience has been supremely enriching so far. I had absolutely no coding experience and I can now feel the level of comfort only growing when it comes to languages like Python and R. The two things that I am grateful are:

- the ability of the instructors to break down concepts and make the abstract ones as tangible as possible
- the emphasis on self-learning and exploration that is built into the course, not all answers are available, students are expected to find answers by using Google and other resources just like programmers do in their day-to-day professional lives

Thank you Udacity for the experience! It is challenging and rewarding in equal measure.