Updated March 2, 2023
Introduction to Data Analyst Interview Questions and Answers
There is an increased demand for careers in data science, data analytics, and programming, the need for a data analyst, is higher. If we are interested in problem-solving, communicating knowledge with others, data analyst careers would be the best. Most data analysts aim for large-scale data such as Hadoop. The basic skills required to be a data analyst are learning scripting and statistical language, advanced excel, knowledge of SQL, need good presentation skills for reporting and visualizing data, database design data mining, cleaning. Their job is to collect the data and use it to help companies to make better business decisions.
They work with large amounts of data like figures, facts, raw data, and numbers, need to see through the data and analyze it to give out the final predictions. They typically use systems and calculation applications to figure out the numbers. The main goals of a data analyst are discovering useful information and supporting decision-making in their business.
Data analysts have the following responsibilities:
- Working with teams, management, data scientist.
- Analyzing and interpreting the results using statistical tools.
- Providing data reports to the management.
- Finding new opportunities for process improvement.
Data analysts rely on various tools to collect the data.
Some common tools are:
- Excel
- SQL
- Google Analytics
- Tableau
- Visual Optimizer
How does a Day Look like for a Data Analyst?
The data analyst will gather and retrieve the data, process it to give out meaningful information to the outside user. Their work varies depending on the type of data they are given (sales, social, inventory). They spend their time developing systems for collecting data and making their implementation into reports that will help their company in leading.
Pros and Cons of Data Analyst
Given below are the pros and cons:
Pros:
- Data Analyst is high in demand, with an attractive salary at entry levels.
- Can work for a wide range of companies, offering career opportunities.
Cons:
- Need to learn programming skills SQL to work with a high volume of the data.
Now, if you are looking for a job that is related to Data Analyst, then you need to prepare for the 2023 Data Analyst Interview Questions. It is true that every interview is different as per the different job profiles. Here, we have prepared the important Data Analyst Interview Questions and Answers which will help you get success in your interview.
In this 2023 Data Analyst Interview Questions article, we shall present the 10 most important and frequently used Data Analyst interview questions. These questions will help students build their concepts around Data Analyst and help them ace the interview.
Part 1 – Data Analyst Interview Questions (Basic)
This first part covers basic Data Analyst Interview Questions and Answers:
Q1. What is the role of a data analyst and the application of a data analyst role?
Answer:
A data analyst collects data from different sources and analyses the result using different Statistical techniques. The main responsibilities are to generate insights from data and produce the result to the external clients. There is a huge opportunity in the biotechnology and manufacturing industries. The human genome project is an example.
Q2. How excel is used in data analysis and lists the various steps involved in an analytics project?
Answer:
Excel is used for a variety of purposes as generating summaries and presenting them in an interactive Excel dashboard for easy understanding. Cross-tabulation is done in excel by using a pivot table.
The various steps involved in the analytics project are:
- Understand the business problem.
- Exploring the data.
- Validating the model with new data sets.
- Tracking the results to analyze the performance of the process.
Q3. Mention the difference between data mining and data analyst.
Answer:
| Data Mining | Data Analyst |
| They build an algorithm to identify the structure of the data. The main responsibility here is to make the data more usable. | They are not an individual person. The job profile involves preparing raw data, cleaning, transformation, modeling, and finally, the result is published in the form of charts based on visualizations. |
| They are based on a mathematical model and scientific methods to define data. | They use business intelligence and analytical methods for the data. |
| They do not involve data visualization. | They produce a result using visualization. |
Q4. Give out the problems faced by a data analyst, and what are the key skills required for a data analyst?
Answer:
This is the most asked Data Analyst Interview Questions in an interview.
Some of the problems faced by data analysts are:
- Duplicate spellings
- Missing & overlapping data’s
- Illegal values
- Multiple entries
The key skills required for a Data Analyst are:
They should have the following skills:
- Database knowledge, big data knowledge, presentation skills.
Q5. What do you mean by cleaning data, and what does exploratory data analysis involve?
Answer:
During this process, the unwanted data are sorted out, and all the possibilities of error are ruled out in order to improve the quality of the data.
The best way to clean data is:
- Segregating data.
- Creating a script or utility functions.
- Analyzing the statistics of each data column.
The exploratory data involve:
- Finding descriptive statistics.
- Visualize data with graphs, plots.
- Univariate and multivariate techniques.
- Histograms, Scatterplots, Quantile distribution.
Part 2 – Data Analyst Interview Questions (Advanced)
The second part covers advanced Data Analyst Interview Questions And Answers:
Q6. What are the validation methods used by the data analyst, and which technical tools are often used for analysis and presentation?
Answer:
The most common methods used by data analysts are:
- Data Screening
- Data Verification
Q7. What is the difference between data scientists and data analysts?
Answer:
The difference is that understanding computer science and analyzing the data with scale. Data scientists need only basic concepts of statistics, and newly developed tools are more and more helpful for data scientists. The role of data scientists and data analysts is undefined and varied by own skill set and the other industries. Data scientists can successfully grow into data analysts.
Q8. How to handle the database as a data analyst, and what are the procedures to analyze the data?
Answer:
Data Analyst is responsible for database design and security. They upgrade the database on a regular basis so that it meets the demand of the market needs.
The procedures to analyze the data are:
- Solving the analytical problem.
- Finding the relationship between the categories of data.
- Data cleaning.
- Computing statistics.
- Making a report on the analysis..
Q9. What are the different variable techniques we know of?
Answer:
This is the most popular Data Analyst Interview Questions asked in an interview.
The different variable techniques are:
- Information value criteria
- Clustering
- Principal components
- Factor analysis
Q10. How to treat missing values and outlier values?
Answer:
Missing values are replaced by the mean value of series in time series data. Using the weight of evidence transformation to treat missing values. Numerical values that are far away from zero are treated as an outlier.
Recommended Articles
This has been a guide to the list of Data Analyst Interview Questions and Answers so that the candidate can crackdown on these Data Analyst Interview Questions easily. Here in this post, we have studied top Data Analyst Interview Questions which are often asked in interviews. You may also look at the following articles to learn more –
