This post may contain paid links to my personal recommendations that help to support the site!

Blogs are a great resource of information on data analytics that can help you quite a lot as you go on your journey as a data analyst. You probably would have already known that the data analytics field is ever-expanding and learning is an important step in being a great data analyst!

I’ve had to look through many data analytics blogs myself and they were a great deal of help to me. That’s why I’ve narrowed down the list to the 10 best must-read blogs for every data analyst.

Read on for more!

10 Best Must-Read Blogs for Every Data Analyst

  1. KDNuggets
  2. Simply Statistics
  3. R-bloggers
  4. Analytics Vidhya
  5. Tableau Blog
  6. Playfair Data
  7. Exceljet
  8. Excel Campus
  9. LearnSQL
  10. Datapine Blog
  11. Any Instructor

1. KDNuggets

KDnuggets — a well-known and prestigious site
Source: kdnuggets.com

About:

KDnuggets is one of the largest collection of blogs related to data analytics, big data, data science, and machine learning. Known by many data analysts and data scientists, one would stumble upon this useful blog when learning about new concepts within data analytics. Their blog content is contributed through community writers, which are edited by Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro and Matthew Mayo.

Each blog post typically has short posts of less than 1000 words, which is great for a concise answer to your queries. Many of these posts are opinion articles and tutorials written by actual data analysts and scientists themselves! How good is that?

Why I Chose This:

Personally, after having to Google many different queries to answer my data analytics problems, I have to say that I have stumbled across this blog countless times. For each time I visited, I knew that the content put up in KDNuggets could be trusted. I really like the fact that these community blog posts from contributors that are real data experts out there. Having someone with actual industry experience sharing about his/her work is always a great thing!

Here’s An Article I Found on Their Website:

5 Big Trends in Data Analytics

Link: KDNuggets

2. Simply Statistics

Source: simplystats.org

About:

Simply Statistics is a statistics-focused blog written by Jeff Leek, Roger Peng and Rafa Irizarry. The trio writers are known data professionals, who are also biostatistics professors from renowned colleges such as Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University or Dana Farber Cancer Institute.

Their blog articles are typically about topics within the data science and analytics field, with some elements of biostatistics infused.

Why I Chose This:

Being a biology major myself, I’ve always admired biostatisticians and bioinformaticians who are able to make sense of complex biological data to bring some new insights to our human bodies.

Knowing that the main bloggers of this site consist of professionals in the field of biology, I am more inclined to read about their opinions about how data analysis is done by them.

One aspect of this blog that you have to note is that the frequency of posting for the blogs on this site is relatively low as compared to most blog sites. If you enjoy frequent reads, feel free to give this a skip.

There’s more coming up below!

Link: Simply Statistics

3. R-bloggers

Source: r-bloggers.com

About:

If you’ve heard of this blog, you’re likely to be an avid user of the R language, like me! R-bloggers is a blog made for the online community of R users, through news and tutorials from various contributors.

R-bloggers covers a large variety of content based on the functions within R and how it is used in data analytics. News articles and blog posts are pushed out through email every day, which are delivered in daily digests.

Why I Chose This:

R is a commonly used programming language for data analysis and visualization in the field of data analytics. Almost every data analyst knows about the usefulness of the R statistical packages. R-bloggers provides me with the right amount of comprehensive content on data analytics using R.

With their (almost) daily articles on the various R functionalities, you’re sure to find something you need from within the R-blogger site.

If you enjoy daily reads for self-improvement in data analytics like me, you are sure to enjoy this great blogging community!

Here’s An Interesting Article I Found on Their Website:

Link:

R-bloggers

4. Analytics Vidhya Blog

Analytics Vidhya
Source: analyticsvidhya.com

About:

The Analytics Vidhya Blog should be no stranger to the average data analyst. The blog is part of the Analytics Vidhya site, which is a well-known resource hub for all things data analytics. It is one of the largest online resources available for free online.

Their blog articles range from data analyst career-related pieces to tutorials on data visualization in Tableau.

New articles are posted every day, so you won’t have to worry about waiting for new content.

Why I Chose This:

Being rather new to the data analytics field, I am still quite heavily reliant on online resources to solve some of my data problems. The Analytics Vidhya blog has been a GREAT help to me in my continual learning, which I apply to my work.

For example, I have been browsing through the articles on Tableau recently, to help solidify and confirm any doubts I have about the BI tool. I’m sure any BI data analyst would appreciate these articles too.

Their Tableau for Beginners section is one of the resources I’ve been burying my head into recently.

Here’s An Interesting Article I Found on Their Website:

Link:

Analytics Vidhya Blog

5. Tableau Blog

Tableau Software
Source: tableau.com

About:

What better place to learn Tableau than their Tableau Software blog site, right? The Tableau Blog is a part of Tableau Software’s effort in putting together a resource for the latest trends in BI, community updates for Tableau, and any Tableau product news. The blog is updated with new posts every 2-3 days.

Why I Chose This:

As you can probably already tell, I do handle quite a substantial amount of work in Tableau. Therefore, as a data analyst, I feel that there’s a constant need to keep up with new product updates and features for the data analytics tool that I’m using.

The Tableau blog provides both a good source of news within the area of business intelligence as well as product updates, which is exactly what I’m looking for.

Therefore, if you’re a data analyst working with products from Tableau software, you might want to consider subscribing to their blog.

Here’s An Interesting Article I Found on Their Website:

Interactive, notebook-style analysis in Tableau for data science extensibility

Link:

https://www.tableau.com/about/blog

If you’re interested in my list of the best business intelligence blogs, do check out this post here.

6. Playfair Data Blog

Source: playfairdata.com

About:

The Playfair Data Blog is part of Playfair Data, a Tableau data analytics consulting company. Their company focuses on Tableau, data engineering, data science, and data analytics. This blog is a great resource written by Playfair Data’s Founder and Principal, Ryan Sleeper.

Ryan Sleeper is a known leader in Tableau for analytics, with the titles of Tableau Zen Master, Tableau Global Iron Viz Champion, and Tableau Public Visualization of the Year author.

Why I Chose This:

The Playfair Data Blog has been a great resource to me since I first started my journey in learning Tableau for data analytics.

Ryan Sleeper’s visualizations are absolutely stunning and they inspired me to create better data visualizations that provide great value and storytelling when presenting my data.

The blog posts are always comprehensive, with really clear steps even on advanced topics within Tableau.

Here’s An Interesting Article I Found on Their Website:

Introducing a New Highlighting User Experience in Tableau

Link:

Playfair Data Blog

7. Exceljet

Exceljet
Source: exceljet.net

About:

Exceljet is one of the most helpful, down-to-earth blogs I’ve come across when sourcing for solutions to my data analytics problems. As the blog name suggests, Exceljet is a blog that provides tutorials and comprehensive information on all matters within Microsoft Excel.

Exceljet is run by Dave Bruns and his wife, Lisa. The main aim of their Excel blog is to help others complete work more efficiently in Excel.

Some of their blog content include tutorials and explanations of formulas, functions, pivot tables and charts.

Some of these are even put together into video format for easier digestions for beginners. Here’s their about page, if you’d like to find out more.

Why I Chose This:

Exceljet has been one of my go-to sites to look for clear information on unclear concepts and formulas in Excel. As a data analyst, I typically have to understand the basic formulas and logic more than the average casual Excel user.

That’s why I’ve found Exceljet to be a gem when I’m looking up some new formulas to better organize and clean my data.

Furthermore, Exceljet’s focus on helping others with working faster in Excel has helped to solve many data problems by helping me pick up concepts fast through their clear and comprehensive information.

I also found their videos to be clear enough for any beginner or intermediate user to grasp quickly.

I’ve personally used this site more times that I want to admit but I thought that maybe a data analyst or data scientist like you would be able to benefit from Exceljet too.

Here’s An Interesting Article I Found on Their Website:

101 Excel Functions you should know

Link:

Exceljet

8. Excel Campus

Source: excelcampus.com

About:

Excel Campus is a resource that you simply cannot miss out on, especially if you use Microsoft Excel often at work as a data analyst. Excel Campus provides educational tutorials and blogs catered just for the data analyst.

Excel Campus is founded by Excel-geek Jon Acampora with more than 10 years of experience working with Excel. He’s also recognized by Microsoft with the Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award.

The topics covered are the mostly on Microsoft data analytics tools, ranging from Excel VBA, Pivot Tables, Power Pivot, Power BI and Power Query.

If you’re looking for a platform to learn more about the Microsoft data analytics software suite, Excel Campus would be great for you.

Why I Chose This:

I discovered Excel Campus while I was searching for more information on Power Query and stumbled on the high-value content produced on this blog.

Since then I’ve been heading back to this site to learn more about the deeper concepts within Excel such as VBA and Power Query.

Although I’ve yet to look into the resources on Power BI, I believe that any data analyst looking for related blogs and tutorials can benefit from this blog.

Here’s An Interesting Article I Found on Their Website:

Vlookup to Other Workbooks – Managing, Updating, & Sharing Files with Formula Links

Link:

Excel Campus

9. LearnSQL Blog

LearnSQL.com
Source: learnsql.com

About:

The LearnSQL Blog provides educational content for data analysts who want to master Structured Query Language (SQL), which is a common querying language used to extract data from databases.

At the LearnSQL blog, topics range from data analytics in general to specific syntax rules and function tutorials in SQL. Alongside the usual blog articles, another content feature is their Cookbook

. Similar to blogs, they provide great instructional content to specific functions within SQL.

New articles on LearnSQL typically get published every 2-3 days, which makes it a rather active and expanding blog.

Why I Chose This:

LearnSQL is a resource like no other in its area of SQL. If you’ve done some searching yourself, looking for learning resources on SQL online can really be a pain due to the lack of complete information out there.

This blog provided me with a more comprehensive understanding of SQL concepts that I can apply in a practical way in my job as a data analyst.

Here’s An Interesting Article I Found on Their Website:

What is the Difference Between COUNT(*), COUNT(1), COUNT(column name), and COUNT(DISTINCT column name)?

Link:

LearnSQL Blog

10. Datapine Blog

Source: datpine.com

About:

The Datapine Blog is part of Datapine, which is a data analytics solution company.

Despite being part of a company this blog has a great collection of the latest news and developments in the business intelligence and data analytics field!

This blog is great for data analysts who are looking for inspirations for dashboarding and tracking their KPI metrics. Most of the recent blog posts are written by Sandra Durcevic.

New blog posts are up on a weekly basis, which can be great for those looking for a consistent weekly upload schedule.

Why I Chose This:

Coming from a business intelligence company, the Datapine Blog focuses on areas within BI and marketing analytics. This makes the blog a wonderful weekly source of news in analytics, which has been my constant source of information about data analytics out there.

Additionally, the blog articles are mostly a good 10-minute read that can keep you occupied as you take your Monday morning coffee.

Here’s An Interesting Article I Found on Their Website:

18 Examples Of Big Data Analytics In Healthcare That Can Save People

Link:

Datapine Blog

11. Any Instructor

Last but not least, a great blog for beginner data analysts is this blog you’re reading right now!

Written with a beginner’s common problems and questions in mind, Any Instructor is good for anyone curious to learn more about analytics and to have their burning questions answered.

Also, if you’ve read this far, I’m sure you must have loved our blog content!

If that’s you, I’d recommend checking out our other articles on this blog.

Here’s an easy article you can start with about learning data analytics.

Final Thoughts

Being a data analyst can be a fulfilling one but it also requires a great deal of learning and self-improvement.

Therefore, having a good list of reliable sources on data analytics concepts can really make the job much more enjoyable.

So here you go, this was my personal list of data analytics blogs that I’ve narrowed down from the various sources, specifically picked out for driven data analysts.

Go ahead and pick some of these blogs to bookmark today!

My Favorite Learning Resources:

Here are some of the learning resources I’ve personally found to be useful as a data analyst and I hope you find them useful too!

These may contain affiliate links and I earn a commission from them if you use them.

However, I’d honestly recommend them to my juniors, friends, or even my family!

My Recommended Learning Platforms!

Learning PlatformWhat’s Good About the Platform?
1CourseraCertificates are offered by popular learning institutes and companies like Google & IBM
2DataCampComes with an integrated coding platform, great for beginners!
3PluralsightStrong focus on data skills, taught by industry experts
4StratascratchLearn faster by doing real interview coding practices for data science
5UdacityHigh-quality, comprehensive courses

My Recommended Online Courses + Books!

TopicOnline CoursesBooks
1Data AnalyticsGoogle Data Analytics Professional Certificate
2Data ScienceIBM Data Science Professional Certificate
3ExcelExcel Skills for Business Specialization
4PythonPython for Everybody SpecializationPython for Data Analysis
5SQLIntroduction to SQLSQL: The Ultimate Beginners Guide: Learn SQL Today
6TableauData Visualization with TableauPractical Tableau
7Power BIGetting Started with Power BI DesktopBeginning Microsoft Power BI
8R ProgrammingData Science: Foundations using R SpecializationLearning R
9Data VisualizationBig Book of Dashboards

To see all of my most up-to-date recommendations, check out this resource I’ve put together for you here.

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