I’ll tell you more about the course in a moment...

...but first let me reassure you: I began at zero too!

Prior to consulting and creating courses, I worked as a forensic accountant, doing investigations into sanctions violations at large financial organizations.

We used Excel and SQL to manage our project data -- hundreds of thousands of transactions that we would analyze for the legal team.

There was one time I working on the master Excel dataset for a few days, but the unique identifier column was hidden. These unique IDs were therefore omitted from all the filters and sorts.

I had a total panic when I realized that the ID numbers were now totally out of sync with the related data, and there was no way for anyone to now reference the data.

(Thankfully, I was able to create a new unique identifier based on the data, and use that to retrieve the IDs from an older copy of the dataset, where they weren’t messed up.)

I learnt the valuable lesson of being careful with my data and keeping a good audit trail -- something we discuss throughout this course.

It was also around this time that I realized how valuable solid data and spreadsheet skills were, and I’ve taken every opportunity to further my skills since then.

Fast forward to today:

Hi! I'm your instructor, Ben Collins

I'm an experienced data analytics instructor and spreadsheet developer.

I help individuals and businesses better understand their data through analytical insights and visualizations.

Over 20,000 professionals from 1,000+ companies have enrolled in my training courses, including employees from PwC, Netflix, Verizon, Google, the UN and other Fortune 500 companies.

My training has helped these professionals advance their careers. I’ve also guided small and large organizations as they migrate from Microsoft Excel to Google Sheets.

Since 2019, Google have recognized me as a Google Developer Expert for G Suite Technology, one of only a handful worldwide.

I have extensive experience with Google Apps Script, Google Data Studio, Microsoft Excel, SQL and Tableau.

I previously taught data courses and workshops for the education startup General Assembly in Washington, D.C..

Josh wanted to be a data analyst, so he took a data analysis course to accelerate his career

Josh was one of my students in the first Data Analysis class I taught for General Assembly in Washington, DC. (In that course, I taught data analysis fundamentals with Excel, but the topics were similar to what I now teach in Google Sheets.)

Today, less than 3 years later, he has a masters degree in predictive analytics and works as a fully fledged data scientist. Wow!

Anyway, I won’t say anymore, I’ll let Josh tell his story.

Thanks Josh!

What amazes me about Josh’s story is how quickly he’s advanced his career, by working hard and grabbing every opportunity that came his way.

For Josh it began by leveling up his Excel skills and learning the foundational data analysis techniques in the first Data Analysis course I taught at General Assembly.

You never know what doors might open when you take that first step, but you can bet that investing in your data skills will pay off in this day and age.

Perhaps you dream of becoming a data scientist like Josh, or perhaps you simply want to extract more value from your business data. In either case, this course will help you learn the foundations of data analysis, in a clear and concise way.

Thanks for sharing your story Josh!

There’s never been a better time to learn data analysis than right now.

Demand for data analysts and data scientists is soaring and will continue to do so for decades to come. It’s fast becoming a necessary skill to get along in today’s job market.

Our jobs, even our lives, are becoming more dependent on data and an ability to understand, interpret and communicate with data.

I love it when I come across examples of data analysis in the real world:

Example 1:

I recently read a brilliant book about paleontology, called The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, by Steve Brusatte. It tells the story of the origin and demise of the dinosaurs, which is absolutely fascinating. Half-way through the book, he included this wonderful correlation example from his line of work:

“Scientists have measured the limb bones of many living animals, and it turns out that the thickness of the main bone in each limb that supports the animal [...] is strongly statistically correlated with the weight of the animal. In other words, there is a basic equation that works for almost all living animals: if you can measure limb-bone thickness, you can then calculate body weight with a small but recognized margin of error”

Example 2:

Another example was an article in the Economist magazine about Netflix’s success. The article mentioned an assessment from Goldman Sachs that found subscriber growth was correlated with the rate at which Netflix added new content.

It figures they have huge subscriber numbers then, since Netflix spend billions on content creation each year (this year they’re launching 82 feature films and over 700 TV shows!).

Example 3:

Even more recently, The New York Times published a super interesting article about their statistical analysis of the new Nike Vaporfly shoes, and whether they made a difference to a runner’s time. Based on exhaustive analysis, using many different approaches, the answer appears to be yes. Yes, these shoes really do make your run faster...

A solid grasp of the fundamentals is 100x more important than keeping up with flashy trends.

There are a lot of exciting new technologies and techniques being applied to data today. Machine learning, neural networks, facial recognition, Tensorflow, etc… but these are designed for big, really big data, and operate at the cutting edge of the field.

However, unless you have a team of data scientists and terrabytes of data, you’re unlikely to want or need the latest and greatest data trends.

What you really need is insights. Answers to questions like what’s the average lifetime value of my customers? What was my churn rate last month? If I spend $100k on marketing this year, what’s my expected ROI?

And to answer questions like those, you don’t need the flashy stuff.

You need a solid grasp of the fundamental techniques of data analysis. Techniques like linear regression, correlation and customer analysis.

And that’s exactly what I teach in this course.

About the course

If you want to...

• Describe and understand your datasets
• Test your hunches and confirm or disprove what you believe your data is telling you
• See how to convince your boss of your ideas backed up with rigorous results
• Predict outcomes based on your existing data
• Understand trends in your data over time, so you can identify successful events
• Understand your customers better, to better serve them

...then Data Analysis with Google Sheets is for you.

Inside this course I share all the knowledge I’ve built up over the past 15 years working with data in spreadsheets.

I’ve packaged it all into a series of simple, bite-size video lessons, complete with Google Sheet templates, that anyone can follow.

Enroll now to get:

• Actionable, bite-size video lessons teaching key data analysis topics
• All raw datasets for you to follow along
• All solution files for your own use
• Access to the private course Facebook group for Q&A
• Certificate upon completion

Templates Are Included

At the beginning of each module are templates with the raw datasets and solution files, available for your use, saving you hours of time.

Here’s a sample of what you can expect with the templates:

Access To The Private Course Community Group

Your enrollment is backed up with support.

There’s a private Facebook group for students, where you can ask questions, share your insights and knowledge, share your wins, and connect with other students.

I’ll be hanging out there to answer your questions.

Lifetime Access To The Course

Your enrollment in Data Analysis with Google Sheets comes with lifetime access to the course material.

That way you can take a break from the material if you’re out of town, on vacation, or just swamped for a few days.

Interruptions happen, and your course videos will ALWAYS be here for you when you’re ready. This lifetime access also includes all future updates and upgrades at no extra charge.

This is my way of ensuring that Data Analysis with Google Sheets remains an excellent long-term investment for you and your business.

Certificate Of Completion

Want to show off your newly acquired skills?

You’ll automatically get a certificate upon completing the course, which you can share or post on Linkedin.

Ready to join?

Still have questions? Drop me a line at [email protected] and I’ll get back to you shortly with an answer!