This week prepares us for the learning journey ahead. We start with a 1-on-1 session with the course instructor to discuss your objectives and provide a personalized introduction to the course. We then dive into an interactive tutorial designed to get you setup and familiar with the essential tools we will use throughout the course.
Data Manipulation
By the end of this course, you will have the conceptual understanding and the technical skills to answer your questions with data. The content is designed for people with little to no prior experience with coding or with working with data and thought from the ground up for the AI era.
Course Starts
May 05, 2025
Estimated Time
8 Weeks
at 6 to 8 hours per week
Format
Online, self-paced
Complemented with live support from AI and our instructors
Price
USD 680
Audience
Who is this course for?
Driven Professionals
Product Managers, Business leaders, and Entrepreneurs seeking to learn how to extract answers to their questions from data.
Aspiring Data Practitioners
Individuals seeking to start their learning journey to become effective data analysts, data scientists or data engineers.
Objectives
What will you get out of this course?
You will be able to confidently extract reliable answers to your questions from data.
Translate your business need to a well-formed question that can be answered with data.
Design the metrics or data structures that best answer your question.
Inspect and build familiarity with the available data.
Identify the data manipulation steps that need to be carried out to transform data from its existing form to the target form.
Write concise code that carries out the data transformation steps.
Use AI assistants (like ChatGPT) effectively throughout the process.
Instructor
Who is the course instructor?
This course is designed by Yusuf Saber, who combines his practical experience from leading data and AI teams at Careem and Talabat with his academic background in Machine Learning. Yusuf is also a Venture Partner at COTU Ventures and advises several tech companies on their technology, AI and data projects. His wide exposure has allowed him to design the curriculum in a way that bridges the gap between theory and real-world application of data to drive commercial benefit to companies.
Content
What will the course cover?
We took every care to select and organize the course content to maximize value, empowerment, and ease of comprehension for our learners.
This section forms the core of our course. We'll cover the fundamental data manipulation operations such as data summarization, filtering and merging. As we conclude this section, you'll be well-equipped with a comprehensive understanding of the critical operations necessary for extracting insights from data.
Data comes in many forms, and each requires a unique approach. In this section, we'll explore the specifics of working with text data, categorical data, logical data, and date-time data. Knowing how to work with these common types of data is crucial as it dramatically expands your capabilities in data manipulation and analysis.
In the real world, data is rarely perfect. This section equips you with the strategies and techniques to handle common real-world data challenges such as extracting values from text, handling missing data, dealing with duplicate data, and reshaping data for easier analysis.
In this final week, we reflect on everything we learned and present strategies for making the most of it. We distinguish between the kinds of questions you are now equipped to answer and those that are outside the scope of this course, ensuring you use your new skills responsibly. We wrap up with pointers for continued learning.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
General
Optima is an online learning platform that allows everyone, whatever their profession may be, to acquire the data & AI skills they need to achieve their goals. Our approach combines the best of learning science, expert knowledge, and cutting-edge AI models to provide the most effective learning platform to you.
(1) Onboarding and goal-setting video call with an Optima instructor. (2) 1-year access to the course on Optima's self-paced learning platform. (3) Support from both the AI tutor and Optima instructors whenever needed. (4) Option to learn the course multiple times in different languages (SQL, Python and/or R) at no additional cost.
You’ll have access for a full year, including all updates and enhancements made within the period.
Yes. Upon completion of the course, a certificate will be provided which can be showcased on your LinkedIn profile.
You have access to two primary forms of support:
(1) An AI tutor, which is constantly enhanced and trained using the best AI models, provides personalized assistance as you learn and practice new concepts. It’s deeply integrated into our content and designed to offer guidance, corrections, and encouragement, allowing you to learn at your own pace.
(2) Our instructors monitor learners' progress, including interactions with the AI tutor to identify any challenges a learner may be facing. If they identify that a learner needs additional help, instructors proactively reach out to provide support.
Also, learners are always welcome to ask questions directly to instructors via Slack or email."
(1) An AI tutor, which is constantly enhanced and trained using the best AI models, provides personalized assistance as you learn and practice new concepts. It’s deeply integrated into our content and designed to offer guidance, corrections, and encouragement, allowing you to learn at your own pace.
(2) Our instructors monitor learners' progress, including interactions with the AI tutor to identify any challenges a learner may be facing. If they identify that a learner needs additional help, instructors proactively reach out to provide support.
Also, learners are always welcome to ask questions directly to instructors via Slack or email."
Content
No. We designed this course for people with little to no prior experience working with data or with coding. All the necessary conceptual and technical skills will be covered during the course.
Yes, this course is specially designed for product managers and business leaders seeking to learn how to extract answers to their questions from data. Moreover, this course assumes no prior experience working with data or with coding.
Yes. This is actually the ideal first foundational course for aspiring data analysts, data scientists, and data engineers.
If you are a senior data analyst or data scientist, we would not recommend that you take this course. This course is aimed at people with little to no experience working with data. We are expanding our content library quickly and will be offering courses aimed at senior data practitioners in the near future. Please email us at team@optima.io and tell us what you'd like to learn.
You have the option to choose Python, R, or SQL. Our course’s conceptual understanding first approach makes it possible to adopt any data programming language (Python, R, or SQL). When you sign up, we will help you select the most suitable programming language.
We recognize that AI is fundamentally reshaping how we work with data. We embraced this reality and designed our courses from the ground up to empower learners with the conceptual understanding and technical skills needed to employ AI systems effectively to both stay undeniably relevant in the age of AI, and to achieve levels of productivity and quality never before possible. In short, we aim to prepare our learners for the future of working with data not it’s past.
Payment
If at any time you realize that the course doesn't address your learning and growth needs, we'll refund you in full.
We accept a variety of payment methods through our secure payment gateway. This includes credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and others.
Yes. We believe in equal access to learning and have a certain number of seats reserved for those with financial constraints. If you believe you qualify, please reach out to us at team@optima.io.
Have other questions? Please drop us a line at team@optima.io.
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Acquire the skills to extract answers to questions from data.
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