Description
Welcome to Data Analytics Foundations for Accountancy I! You’re joining thousands of learners currently enrolled in the course. I’m excited to have you in the class and look forward to your contributions to the learning community.
To begin, I recommend taking a few minutes to explore the course site. Review the material we’ll cover each week, and preview the assignments you’ll need to complete to pass the course. Click Discussions to see forums where you can discuss the course material with fellow students taking the class.
If you have questions about course content, please post them in the forums to get help from others in the course community. For technical problems with the Coursera platform, visit the Learner Help Center.
Good luck as you get started, and I hope you enjoy the course!
What you will learn
Course Orientation
You will become familiar with the course, your classmates, and our learning environment. The orientation will also help you obtain the technical skills required for the course.
Module 1: Foundations
This module serves as the introduction to the course content and the course Jupyter server, where you will run your analytics scripts. First, you will read about specific examples of how analytics is being employed by Accounting firms. Next, you will learn about the capabilities of the course Jupyter server, and how to create, edit, and run notebooks on the course server. After this, you will learn how to write Markdown formatted documents, which is an easy way to quickly write formatted text, including descriptive text inside a course notebook. Finally, you will begin learning about Python, the programming language used in this course for data analytics.
Module 2: Introduction to Python
This module focuses on the basic features in the Python programming language that underlie most data analytics scripts. First, you will read about why accounting students should learn to write computer programs. Second, you will learn about basic data structures commonly used in Python programs. Third, you will learn how to write functions, which can be repeatedly called, in Python, and how to use them effectively in your own programs. Finally, you will learn how to control the execution process of your Python program by using conditional statements and looping constructs. At the conclusion of this module, you will be able to write Python scripts to perform basic data analytic tasks.
Module 3: Introduction to Data Analysis
This module introduces fundamental concepts in data analysis. First, you will read a report from the Association of Accountants and Financial Professionals in Business that explores Big Data in Accountancy. Next, you will learn about the Unix file system, which is the operating system used for most big data processing (as well as Linux and Mac OSX desktops and many mobile phones). Second, you will learn how to read and write data to a file from within a Python program. Finally, you will learn about the Pandas Python module that can simplify many challenging data analysis tasks, and includes the DataFrame, which programmatically mimics many of the features of a traditional spreadsheet.
Module 4: Statistical Data Analysis
This module introduces fundamental concepts in data analysis. First, you will read about how to perform many basic tasks in Excel by using the Pandas module in Python. Second, you will learn about the Numpy module, which provides support for fast numerical operations within Python. This module will focus on using Numpy with one-dimensional data (i.e., vectors or 1-D arrays), but a later module will explore using Numpy for higher-dimensional data. Third, you will learn about descriptive statistics, which can be used to characterize a data set by using a few specific measurements. Finally, you will learn about advanced functionality within the Pandas module including masking, grouping, stacking, and pivot tables.
