Earned the Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst Professional Certificate

The programme I completed

I completed the Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst Professional Certificate, an eight course series on Coursera. This was a structured learning programme, and I have not taken or passed the PL-300 certification exam.

I want that distinction to be clear because a course certificate and an exam based certification represent different achievements. This milestone records the learning I completed while building my Power BI skills.

Connecting the parts of a report

The part of Power BI that interests me most is how the preparation, model and report depend on one another. A chart can be easy to read and still be misleading if the relationships or measures underneath it are wrong.

In my own projects, that means paying attention to the level of detail in the data. An order can contain several product lines. A report needs to distinguish a count of those lines from a count of distinct orders, especially when a headline number is meant to describe customers or deliveries.

Applying the learning

My Olist and retail projects give me different ways to practise. In Olist, I bring revenue, delivery and review data together. In the retail analysis, I look at the relationship between sales, discounts and profit.

I use these projects to keep working on the connection between a business question and a measure. What is being counted? Which filters apply? Does the result still make sense when I change the date range? Those questions matter as much as the visual presentation.

Where I go from here

The certificate is one step in my transition into data. I am continuing to improve the projects, explain my assumptions more clearly and develop the SQL and Python skills that support the reporting work.