What does a data analyst actually do?
A data analyst turns ambiguous business questions into clear numerical answers. The day-to-day is pulling data from a warehouse, cleaning it, charting it, and writing a short summary the decision maker reads. Most analysts spend more time on communication than on tools.
The 80/20 of analyst work
Eighty percent: gathering requirements, cleaning data, building a chart, writing one paragraph that explains it. Twenty percent: deeper modelling, dashboards that other teams reuse, ad hoc deep dives.
What tools you actually touch
SQL daily, Power BI or Tableau a few times a week, Excel for prototypes and ad hoc work, plus an internal data platform. Increasingly some Python or DAX where the standard tools fall short.
Who you work with
Product managers, marketing leads, finance, ops, occasionally executives. The job is half technical translation, half stakeholder management.
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