Warm-Up Activity: Connecting Back to Week 3

Reflecting on Your Learning So Far

In Week 3, you explored how data impacts both offline and online interactions. You examined real-world examples of how organisations collect and use data and considered ethical implications in data-driven decision-making.

❓ Reflection Questions from Week 3

✔ How does your organisation use data in both offline and online settings?
✔ What role does data play in digital interactions, automation, and AI?
✔ What ethical considerations must be taken into account when working with data?
✔ Are there datasets within your organisation that are underutilised?

Keep these questions in mind as you move forward—you may still refine your understanding as you engage with new concepts!

Starter Activity: Preparing to Work with Data Hands-On

Instructions:

This week, you will be experimenting with Excel to clean, analyse, and visualise data. Take a few moments to consider how data is prepared before analysis.

Reflect on the following questions:

✔ What common issues arise when working with raw data?
– Have you encountered inconsistent formatting, missing values, or duplicates?
✔ Why is data cleansing important before conducting analysis?
✔ How does poor data quality impact decision-making?
✔ What Excel tools or functions do you already use for data cleaning and analysis?
✔ Have you worked with charts or visualisations in Excel before? If so, what challenges did you face?

This activity is designed to help you think critically about data preparation before you begin working on real datasets.

Linking Back to Week 3

If needed, refer back to the concepts from Week 3, including any self-study activities you completed. This will help reinforce your learning and prepare you for hands-on data experimentation in Week 4.

Takeaway:
By understanding the importance of data cleansing, exploratory analysis, and visualisation, you’ll be better equipped to draw meaningful insights from data.

Ready to dive in? Let’s get started!