With the evolution of the 4th industrial revolution, the need to be skilled in the area of data analytics and visualization cannot be over emphasized.
Data has transformed the world we live in. It is the fuel for success for any size organisation across all industries. Insights from data help you innovate and make smarter decisions. Being data-driven is about having the power to explore data and make predictions ensuring that the appropriate and accurate data required to answer critical business problems is collected, analyzed and presented effectively to drive maximum value.
Data analytics and visualization is an expanding field concerned with analyzing, modeling, and visualizing complex high dimensional data. It offers tremendous opportunity for career growth. This involves exploring the use of the latest tools and analytical methods to interpret and communicate findings in ways that change minds and behaviors.
Having seen its relevance, African Girls in Science and Technology Initiative (Afro-Tech Girls) introduced another Educate series, Data That Speaks, a Data Analytics and Visualization workshop using Tableau.
“Our mission at Afro-Tech Girls is to encourage, educate and empower African girls of secondary and university levels in the Science Technology Engineering and Maths field (STEM) fields to follow through and achieve whatever goals they set for themselves through mentorship, teamwork, creativity and innovation,” the organizers say.
Data That Speaks was a 5-week, Saturday only workshop for female university students and young professionals which introduced students to the field by covering state-of-the-art modeling, analysis and visualization techniques.
The workshop took place at the conference hall of the Beni Gold hotel, Victoria Island on the 16th of June through 14th of July, 2018 with 18 ladies in attendance from different fields and four guest facilitators coming in each week to teach them on topics in Data Science, Data Analytics, Data Storytelling and Data Visualization using Tableau. Each participant was made to work on a personalized project applying the learning and skills gained from the class.
“We had Dolapo Amusat a creative and business analyst who taught the students introduction to Data Science and Data Analytics using Alteryx and Knime, Njideka Okafor a software developer/analytics enthusiast who taught predictive and descriptive analysis using excel, Jubril Juma a UX researcher from Google who taught data storytelling, different data visuals and what chart works best and Abisola Oni, a product consultant (Tableau) who took the final class on data visualization using Tableau,” Adeola Shasanya, one of the founders of Afrotech Girls said.
The workshop came to an end on the 14th July and was commemorated with a presentation ceremony for the participants to provide an opportunity for them to share some of what they had learnt and network with members of the ATG community.
The occasion was graced by Wole Oyekanmi, COO of Quantextive as guest speaker who spoke on “Application of Data Analytics in financial services” and other invited guests.
Finally, there were short presentations from three of the participants with a question and answer session. Ifeoluwa Adedeji a 500L student of College of medicine, University of Lagos worked on the analysis of child mortality rate in the US over time, Chisom Ezeilo, a programme associate and natural hair enthusiast worked on the rate of return to natural hair and finally, Raqeebat Buhari, worked on the correlation between anxiety in children and overprotective parenting using linear regression and also the trend of performances of counties over the years in the World Cup games.
JUMOKE AKIYODE-LAWANSON
