Webbo3 Data Analytics · Cohort 2 · Excel Track · Week 1, Virtual 1
The Workflow and Tools in Real Life
Today nobody teaches. You rewatch, you write three sentences, and you find data analysis happening in a business you already know.
By the end of this class you can
- Describe the analytics workflow in your own words
- Connect each workflow stage to something a real Nigerian business does
- Say which stage interests you most, and why
- Spot data analysis in companies you use every day
A virtual class is practice time. In Live 1 you heard what data analysis is. Today you prove you can explain it yourself, because an idea you cannot put in your own words is an idea you have only borrowed.
What you do in this class
- Rewatch the Live 1 recording (or reread the Live 1 lesson), with the five questions in Part 1 beside you.
- Write three sentences: what data analysis is, one example from a Nigerian business, and which workflow stage interests you most.
- Optional: find one real company using data and write two lines on how they use it.
- Do the self-check in Part 4 and the checkpoint at the end.
Hand in: Your three sentences (and your optional two lines), posted where your tutor asks.
Part 1: Rewatch With a Purpose
Rewatching is only useful if you are looking for something. Keep these five questions beside you and pause the recording when you hear the answer:
- What are the three words in the definition of data analysis that carry the most weight?
- What is the difference between information and insight?
- Which type of analytics answers "why did it happen?"
- What are the five stages of the workflow, in order?
- Which tool handles millions of rows best, and which builds dashboards many people use?
Check your answers to Part 1
Examining, question, decision. Information says what or how much; insight compares or explains it so it tells you something new. Diagnostic. Raw data, clean, analyse, visualise, decide. SQL for millions of rows; Power BI for dashboards many people use.
Part 2: Your Three Sentences
What Each Sentence Must Do
| Sentence | It must | It must not |
|---|---|---|
| 1. What data analysis is | Mention a question and a decision, in your own words | Copy the Live 1 definition word for word |
| 2. A Nigerian business example | Name a kind of business, the data it has, and one thing it could decide from it | Stay vague ("companies use data to grow") |
| 3. The stage that interests you | Name one stage and give a real reason | Say "all of them" |
A Worked Example
Here is one student's set of sentences, so you can see the level we are aiming for. Do not copy it: pick a different business and a different stage.
Check Your Own Sentences
- Does sentence 1 contain the idea of a question and the idea of a decision?
- In sentence 2, could you say exactly which column of data the business would need? (For the POS agent: the time of each withdrawal and its amount.)
- In sentence 3, is your reason something you could defend if your tutor asked "why"?
A common sentence 2 is "Banks use data to know their customers." It is true, but it is not an example: which data, and which decision? Make it small and specific. A small, specific example is worth more than a big, vague one.
Part 3 (Optional): A Real Company Using Data
Pick a company you have actually used and think about what it must be recording about you. You do not need inside knowledge: what you can see as a customer is enough to describe the idea.
| Kind of company | What it can record | A decision it can make from that |
|---|---|---|
| An online store, like Jumia | What each customer searched for, viewed and bought | Which products to show you next, and which to put on the home page during a sale |
| A payment company, like Flutterwave or Paystack | Every transaction: amount, time, place, device | Which payments look unusual enough to check for fraud before they go through |
| A ride-hailing app, like Bolt or Uber | Where and when people request rides | Where to encourage drivers to wait, and when prices should rise because demand is high |
| A telecoms network, like MTN or Airtel | How much data each customer uses and when | Which data bundles to offer to which customers |
Write your two lines in this shape: "[Company] records [data] so it can [decision]." For example: "Bolt records where and when people request rides so it can tell drivers which areas will be busy."
Part 4: Self-Check, Which Stage Is This?
For each situation, name the workflow stage: raw data, clean, analyse, visualise or decide. Then open the answer.
(a) A manager reads a chart and moves two staff from Abuja to Port Harcourt for April.
Decide.
(b) An analyst notices "Port Harcourt", "port harcourt" and "PH" and makes them one name.
Clean.
(c) Someone exports 1,070 sales from the till system into a workbook.
Raw data.
(d) An analyst totals revenue by branch and sorts it from highest to lowest.
Analyse.
(e) The branch totals become a bar chart titled "Port Harcourt leads every branch".
Visualise.
(f) An analyst finds 25 sales where the till left Quantity empty and decides how to handle them.
Clean. Deciding what to do with missing values is a cleaning decision, and you will make exactly this one on TechPlug in Week 2.
Picture yourself explaining data analysis to a friend at a bus stop, with no slides and no notes. If you can do it in three sentences using one small example from a business on your street, you understand it.
Checkpoint
Q1. Why must sentence 2 name a specific decision?
Because analysis exists to change a decision. If you cannot name one, you have described data, not analysis.
Q2. A friend says "data analysis is making charts." What is missing?
The question and the decision, and also cleaning and analysing. A chart is only stage 4 of 5.
Q3. Which stage is easiest to skip, and why is that dangerous?
Cleaning. Nothing on screen tells you the data is dirty, so the wrong answers look exactly like right ones.
Tick Before You Move On
- ☐ I rewatched Live 1 and can answer the five questions without looking
- ☐ My sentence 1 mentions a question and a decision
- ☐ My sentence 2 names a business, its data and one decision
- ☐ My sentence 3 names one stage with a real reason
- ☐ I can name the workflow stage for any of the six situations in Part 4
Quick Recap
You can explain data analysis in your own words and connect it to a real business. A good example is small and specific: which data, which decision. Every company you use is running the same five-stage workflow on data about you.
Next, Week 1, Live 2: we open Excel. You will name every part of the window, learn the three data types, and import TechPlug Sales Data correctly.