5 Data Cleaning Courses to Transform Raw Data into Gold for Data Analysts

Data has been referred to as gold, one of the most valuable resources for businesses today. Data quality cannot be compromised since the main capital for data analysts is data quality. Poor or "dirty" data can compromise analysis, leading to inaccurate insights and faulty conclusions. This can result in flawed business decisions, increased operational costs, and dissatisfied customers.

Data from various sources, such as data warehouses, databases, and spreadsheets, sometimes contains inconsistencies, redundancies, or errors. Customer data, for example, in surveys or generally unstructured forms, must be cleaned before proper analysis. Data cleaning ensures that the information is accurate and reliable and enables analysts to provide true, meaningful insights that facilitate better decision-making. This blog lists some data-cleaning courses to help data analysts transform the available data into gold and improve decision-making. 

Benefits of Mastering Data Cleaning for Data Analysts

Taking up data cleaning courses can significantly benefit data analysts, especially from an employment perspective. Here are some key advantages:

• Better Quality of Data: Proficiency in data cleaning ensures that analysts deliver high-quality and reliable datasets, which form the basis for insights with high accuracy and proper decision-making.
• Improved Efficiency: Data cleaning is the most basic skill required by data analysts, and a good command on it would help an analyst save more time than would have been used in manual cleaning, hence giving way for faster analysis.
• Reduces Errors: Proper cleaning reduces errors that can lead to faulty analyses and allows analysts to avoid expensive mistakes.
• Enhanced Analytical Capabilities: Knowledge in data cleaning enhances the ability to do good analysis since clean data forms the basis of any decent analysis.
• Data cleaning skills are highly transferable across industries, as most sectors rely on data. This adaptability makes the analyst more versatile and employable.

Let us explore these handpicked data cleaning courses for data analysts

1. Process Data from Dirty to Clean by Google
2. Data Cleaning by Kaggle
3. Getting and Cleaning Data by Coursera
4. Cleaning, Transforming and Prepping Your Data With Tableau Prep by LinkedIn Learning
5. Excel: Data Cleaning and Analysis Techniques by Udemy

Process Data from Dirty to Clean by Google

This course is a part of the Google Data Analytics Certificate series and aims to deepen your understanding of data analytics tools and concepts. You will learn how to check and clean data using spreadsheets and SQL to ensure your data are sound. In this course, you will get hands-on practice guided by Google data analysts as they teach you valuable data cleaning techniques and reporting methods. By the end of this course, you will confidently clean, transform, and validate data to get it analysis-ready. 

Course Name	Process Data from Dirty to Clean by Google
Duration	26 hours
Provider	Coursera
Course Fee	Subscription Based - ₹1,172/month
Trainer	Google Career Certificates
Skills Gained	Data Cleansing, Spreadsheets, Data Integrity, Sample Size Determination, SQL
Students Enrolled	680,900+
Total Reviews	4.8/5 (16,200+ ratings)

Why Should You Take Up Process Data from Dirty to Clean Course?

• Develop practical data cleaning skills using spreadsheets and SQL.
• Get hands-on training from experienced data analysts from Google.
• Gain skills to check data integrity and verify cleaning results.
• Get ready for entry-level positions in data analysis with no prior experience. 
• Learn to write basic SQL queries and functions, the foundation of any data transformation.

Explore top data analysis courses

Data Cleaning by Kaggle

The Data Cleaning course by Kaggle covers the cleaning of messy real-world data. It covers how to work with missing values, scale and normalize numeric variables for proper analysis, and correctly identify date formats. You will learn to fix character encoding so that you do not get errors loading in data and eliminate inconsistencies such as typos in your datasets. This course is designed to make your data cleaner and more reliable for analysis​.

Course Name	Data Cleaning by Kaggle
Duration	4 hours
Provider	Kaggle
Course Fee	Free
Trainer	Rachael Tatman, Data Scientist at Kaggle
Skills Gained	Handling Missing Values, Scaling and Normalization, Parsing Dates, Character Encodings

Why Should You Take Up Process Data from Dirty to Clean Course?

• Learn how to tackle some of the most common data cleaning problems and analyse data faster.
• Work through five exercises with real, messy data to get hands-on experience working with real data.
• Earn a data cleaning certification by Kaggle for free.

Getting and Cleaning Data by Coursera

The course covers different ways to obtain/retrieve data from the web, APIs, databases, etc., in various formats. It also covers the basics of data cleaning, and you will learn how to make data "tidy". This course will also cover the components of a complete data set, including raw data, processing instructions, codebooks, and processed data. Gain the basic knowledge needed to collect, clean, and share your data.

Course Name	Getting and Cleaning Data by Coursera
Duration	19 hours
Provider	Johns Hopkins University on Coursera
Course Fee	Subscription Based - ₹4,105/month
Trainers	Jeff Leek, PhD; Roger D. Peng, PhD; Brian Caffo, PhD - Johns Hopkins University
Skills Gained	MS Excel, XML, R, Data Processing, Data Analysis, MySQL
Students Enrolled	208,530+
Total Reviews	4.5/5 (8000+ ratings)

Why Should You Take Up Getting and Cleaning Data Course?

• Learn how to efficiently obtain usable data from the web, APIs, and databases.
• Gain insights into managing complete datasets, including raw data, processing instructions, and codebooks.
• Develop essential skills for collecting, cleaning, and sharing data effectively.
• Build a strong foundation for efficient and organized data handling.

Cleaning, Transforming and Prepping Your Data With Tableau Prep by LinkedIn Learning

This course by LinkedIn Learning shows how to use Tableau Prep for data preparation. You will learn to connect to the various data sources and combine data with joins and unions. The course then covers how to filter, split, and rename data and to pivot data so that you can change wide data into long data, the preference of Tableau Desktop. Explore how to sample data, adjust the sample size, and preview and share your output with Tableau Desktop. At the end of the course, you will go through some example flows that show Tableau Prep in action.

Course Name	Cleaning, Transforming and Prepping Your Data With Tableau Prep by LinkedIn Learning
Duration	2.5 hours
Provider	LinkedIn Learning
Course Fee	Free
Trainers	Matt Francis, Senior Software Developer at Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
Skills Gained	Tableau, Data Cleaning, Transforming and Preparing
Students Enrolled	36,600+
Total Reviews	4.8/5 (530+ ratings)

Why Should You Take Up Cleaning, Transforming and Prepping Your Data With Tableau Prep Course?

• Earn LinkedIn Learning certificate
• Learn to clean, reshape, and prepare data efficiently using Tableau Prep's drag-and-drop interface.
• Master connecting and combining multiple data sources with joins and unions.
• Gain skills in filtering, splitting, renaming, and pivoting data to optimize it for Tableau Desktop.

Excel: Data Cleaning and Analysis Techniques by Udemy

This course on Excel: Data Cleaning and Analysis using TEXT functions offers a practical and straightforward approach to mastering essential Excel skills. The course is interactive, with practice assignments ranging from easy to difficult.

Course Name	Excel: Data Cleaning and Analysis Techniques by Udemy
Duration	2.5 hours
Provider	Udemy
Course Fee	INR 2,299
Trainer	Ashish Agarwal, 15+ years in Business & Finance, ex-McKinsey & ex-BlackRock
Skills Gained	Complete overview of Microsoft Excel, Data Analysis in Excel, Data manipulation in Excel, Data cleaning in Excel, Application of TEXT functions in data analysis
Students Enrolled	9,700+
Total Reviews	4.5/5 (3800+ ratings)

Why Should You Take Up Excel: Data Cleaning and Analysis Techniques Course?

• Focused on real-life, practical tasks relevant to daily work.
• Practice assignments with varying difficulty levels to reinforce learning.
• 1 hour of concise, practical, and real-world illustrations of concepts.