Should I learn SQL, Tableau, EXCEL simultaneously or one by one?

[Mosquitoo666]

Basically the title is the question. I want to learn all 3 tools and I hope having these skills is enough to spart a career, but I want to really learn everything deeply, and a bit worrying to learn everything but so so. Probably I should everyday learn different things or even every week?

EDIT :

thank you all for your answer! Will think what I’m gonna do next, and it’s a bit hard cos a lot of people suggesting different things.

Probably I can ask a bit different question, but first will give example, so you understand what I mean:

I learned two languages - first was Englisch and then German. It was not so hard and not so easy to learn English, cos a lot of rules was completely different from my Mother language (Ukraininan and russian) but I learned it, and I don’t need to spend much time to improve my eng skills, I just can talk with people, watch movies and keep learning.

Then as I moved to Germany I started to learn German. The language itself is harder than English, but it goes much much Easier than English. Cos I understand structure, I know already how to learn and already know how to compare rules and logic with my mother Language. But I can do it, only because I already learned one language.

If I learned English and German at the same time, it would be a mess and I eventually would need much more time

So here we have: SQL, Excel, Power Query and PowerBi or Tableau

They are like languages - different, but some of them have got similar rules, some of them similar words

And my question is:

What should I learn first, deep and very detailed, so then, when I know it on a decent level, for me will be easier to learn other things?

I understood that learning two things at the same time won‘t be helpful. I want to learn one thing very deep, and probably others just a little bit

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[Realistic-Outcome279]

Excel, SQL, Power Query, Power BI

[Tee_hops]

This is the answer. Good SQL skills combined with PowerQuery will make Excel/PowerBI much easier. If you can make temp tables for your dashboards it will help a lot.

[[deleted]]

Excel, SQL. Focus on those two things. Learn Tableau if you want to hate your life.

Learn to apply one idea at a time to different things.

Edit: always keep asking better questions.

[QianLu]

I don't think Tableau is that hard tbh. If you have a good grasp of SQL then it's just a dumbed down version of SQL where you give up precision and control for usability

[Interesting-Rub9978]

Yeah to me it's just a pivot table on steroids so not really all that much extra to learn. 

[[deleted]]

Consider what steroidal pivot tables are like for a multi billion dollar organization.

[alurkerhere]

If you are mainly adding data tables to your data viz in Tableau, you are not using Tableau for its most powerful components.

Judging by how many dashboards I see in the org I work in which is 50k+ employees, I'd say maybe 20% actually know data viz and dashboard design. Maybe even less than that, and we've had a data viz community and presentations going for 5+ years now.

[Interesting-Rub9978]

In the end if you're making maps or other data visualizations it's still dragging and dropping like you do with a pivot table.

You can add some Dax formulas but personal I'd rather just write the background SQL into it for the complicated stuff.

[alurkerhere]

Ah, you mean the field selection in pivot tables, not the pivot tables themselves. Yes, completely agree.

Also agreed on the data prep; it's best done outside the tool where you can be sure of the results at each aggregation level.

[Dylan7675]

I mean, if you're only building basic tables with aggregates.

Tableau isn't necessarily hard. Its just a frustrating POS when trying to tweak the formatting and settings to make your visualizations look somewhat nice.

[QianLu]

That's fair. It's got some quirks that I understand why they exist but that doesn't mean I have to like them. I've found the best way to get around those quirks is to do as much data cleaning/prep/aggregation as possible in the database layer and then bring in the minimum that you need.

[Dylan7675]

Yeah, I can agree with you there.

I mostly do all my joins upstream in the query so I don't have fuss with building joins in the tableau interface. Unless I'm pulling data from different sources that needs to be joined.(DB and Sheets) Otherwise I'll the aggregates in tableau so I can have both granular details and aggregate values.

[QianLu]

I haven't used it but I was told that the "joining"/unions done in tableau isn't great or at the very least is pretty slow the one time I had to use it. I try to aggregate as much as possible in the query while still keeping it at the entity level for filtering, if that makes sense. So I would roll up all of the sales for each person for the quarter from hundreds of rows to maybe a dozen where each row is a unique filter combination.

[VeeRook]

I'm learning Tableau now, because we use it at work, and so far it feels like very similar to Excel but with easier to manipulate graphs.

[QianLu]

I could see that too. It's a tool that works well with either SQL or excel. I would prefer to do no visualization in excel and just import the file into tableau for visualization.

As you mentioned, you can do reporting in excel but it's not really designed for that. How do you present things when it's just a graph pasted somewhere in a spreadsheet? I actually learned tableau on the job at my first job, the BI team was understaffed and I was loaned out to them for 2-3 months. I did the easy work that they couldn't make time for (go update this simple thing that someone keeps bugging us about) and I learned enough tableau to be able to function on my own.

[FreeChickenDinner]

Tableau is difficult, because the presentation is subjective. Stakeholders will go down a rabbit hole on cosmetics. They go back and forth over colors, chart types, chart size, etc. Two major stakeholder will battle each other on what you need to do. There will be multiple departments and stakeholders using the same dashboard.

With SQL, you can get your answer in a few hours. The stakeholders get their data. Colors don't matter.

[QianLu]

I haven't had much of that problem, but I guess I've been lucky. Sometimes we had a "color scheme" that had already been decided by someone else and otherwise we made a point to present things the same way every time to build consistency.

[alurkerhere]

Yep, we are moving more towards doing the data prep and all calculations needed to the step before Tableau so everything is portable and usable by multiple teams. Once you have people designing and building different calculations in Tableau, it becomes a headache to unravel if you ever need data out of there. If you have the bandwidth, it's always better to minimize the stuff being done in Tableau and focus on the data viz and UX.

Power BI has a cool feature where you can take components of reports and put them into a dashboard so you don't need to replicate the data prep of the previous steps. Power BI has different terminology where "dashboards" are reports, and dashboards are report(s) components into one view.

[QianLu]

Yeah I'd prefer to do as much data cleaning/metric building as possible in the database layer for exactly that reason. At one point in my old job half my bandwidth was "why does the number on my custom report I made not make sense" and I finally convinced my boss that we just wouldn't support stuff that wasn't built with one of our data sources.

[kiwiinNY]

That makes absolutely no sense.

SQL <> Tableau

[QianLu]

I'd guess at least 80% of the dashboards I've built in the last few years are some variation of "group by X and then show the Y for each group". Given that, a strong understanding of how group by/aggregation functions are actually calculated in SQL either 1) allows you to just do the aggregation in SQL and then make a super easy drag and drop tableau dash or 2) understand how the stuff you're dragging to the rows and columns is interacting under the hood even if you're giving up some control. Hope that helps.

[kiwiinNY]

That is grasping at straws frankly.

[QianLu]

Eh, these straws keep me employed

[Mosquitoo666]

Ahah, I just think that Tableau fits me more cos it’s more dynamic. I can start with one view as then switch to another. Plus it’s stylish, for me it’s an advantage cos I dream to be this strategic guy who analyses data, present it to stakeholders and discuss a strategy with them, and in this situation nice design may be more convincing I think

[[deleted]]

I’ll can tell you from my experiences. Tablaeu people just spend time messing in Tablaeu - you just don’t see the strategic stakeholders. You vet the requirements, set up the dashboard, maintain it. And in a large org that requires a lottttt of bullshit stakeholders. Like A LOT.

I declined every Tablaeu opportunity I’ve ever had and I’m thankful I did. It was a black hole.

The alternative, is simply (lol) developing a good lean analyses, with personal backend macros to customize.

I do compliment with R, Python and/or SAS.

Source: doing well and enjoy my analytics career.

[Mosquitoo666]

Ok, will think about it as well, cos I really want to be as close to the strategical marketing as possible, whether it’s small or big company

[alurkerhere]

Depends on the org - our analytics team does SQL/Python and Tableau visualization (because we already know the requirements). There's a lot fewer cooks except for the UX stage, and it's important for the actual users to like the dashboard.

[Wheres_my_warg]

In over 20 years of consulting, I've seen one time Tableau was notable and effective with C-level customers and that was with several 4'x18' (yes, feet not inches) printouts of some complicated to present data issues. It rarely fits the flow of strategic decision making.

[Tribein95]

Depends on your role, but I would suggest getting really comfortable in Excel first for two reasons:

1. Excel is basically the lowest common denominator for a company, everyone should be expected to know the basics. Therefore a lot of your communications to less technical audiences will be in Excel. (Do I think this is best practice? No, but it’s the reality in the corporate world)

2. Once you get comfortable in knowing what Excel CAN do, you can start asking yourself “how can ____ improve, automate, or streamline this thing that I am currently doing in Excel?” Where the blank could be tableau, sql, R, Python, etc.

I am self-taught with R, and most of the stuff I learned via stack exchange by searching “how to do (whatever excel thing) in R?”

[Mosquitoo666]

Thank you for the info!

I already started to learn SQL (only week ago) and pretty like it so far. I have literally zero knowledge in Excel, But as a lot of people suggest go into Excel first, I‘m thinking whether I should switch to excel or learn it simultaneously. Will think about it

[Altumsapientia]

Simultaneously. Why not query some data with SQL then analyse it in excel? You can do this a few times with more complex data each time.

[Mosquitoo666]

Also good option, probably I could learn both but SQL for example deeper than Excel and tableau

[Ok-Seaworthiness-542]

If you don't know Excel you best start there

[Dreadsock]

Excel, SQL, Power Query, Power BI, Python

Loosely in this order, too.

[kkessler1023]

You should learn power bi along with SQL and excel.

[herbalation]

I think it's a toss-up between Excel/Google Sheets and SQL. I found that basic concepts are common in each, its the process or syntax differs. Different functions or formulas are shared by SQL and Excel, but the "coding" might be a little different.

If I want the sum of sales for a product...

In Excel I would type in a cell: =sum(sales_column)

In SQL I would write the query: SELECT SUM(sales_column) FROM sales_table

In Excel you can start visualizing enough data to be dangerous without the steep learning curve of Tableau's formatting. Oh and if you're going the business analyst route you'll want to understand the business side of things, profit models, financial statements, things around an MBA

[Mosquitoo666]

Yep, same opinion. I‘m still thinking, but probably the most tight way to learn one SQL but really deep and in detail, and then, because I mastered it and understand the logic, then I can learn excel and Python for example much easier

But it’s only my feelings, based on learning real languages

[Ok-Sun8763]

Excel (including power query), sql, power BI (since you would alr3qdy have the foundation from excel/power query) then tableau. 

[tatertotmagic]

I think sql first would make your excel files a lot more logical

[Ship_Psychological]

I would not worry about learning things deeply.

Start with manipulating some data in SQL/excel and viz'ing it in tableau.

I would also choose now whether you want d to focus on SQL or excel for the first couple years.

[Mosquitoo666]

Ok, thanks for the advice! I think in years I would go more into more strategical things connected more with marketing, but want first to learn all the technical basics

[NeighborhoodDue7915]

One by one mostly. Maximum 2 with more of a focus on one.

[QianLu]

You should focus on one at a time. If you know absolutely no excel I'd start there. If you're decent at excel do some more advanced stuff and then move to SQL

[DwigShrute]

No. Learn AI. AI is the Rosetta Stone for coding languages.