Python for Data Analytics

Python is the most in-demand skill in data analytics. This module teaches you to use it the way analysts actually do — not through abstract exercises, but through a real-world project analysing NHS England emergency department performance data across 198 hospitals and 25 months. You will work in Google Colab, use pandas to clean and join real datasets, build visualisations, and deliver a stakeholder report in Excel and PowerPoint. Gemini AI is integrated throughout as a professional copilot. And by the final lesson, you will know how to present your work to employers — with a polished LinkedIn profile, a GitHub portfolio, and the language to talk about your project in interviews. No prior programming experience required.

What does this module teach?

Every lesson in this module is built around four pillars. Technical skills alone do not make a data analyst job-ready — you need to think in business terms, work alongside AI tools intelligently, and be able to present yourself and your work with confidence.

Pillar	What it means in this module
Technical Skills	Python, pandas, Google Colab, data wrangling, joins, aggregation, visualisation, Excel reporting — the hands-on skills employers test in interviews
Business Acumen	Every lesson opens with a real NHS business scenario. You learn to frame analysis as answers to business questions — not just code that runs
AI Literacy	Gemini AI is your copilot from Lesson 2. You learn to use it to accelerate analysis, generate and verify code, and communicate findings — critically, not blindly
Personal Branding	Your NHS project becomes a portfolio piece. You learn to publish it on GitHub, write about it on LinkedIn, and talk about it in interviews — turning coursework into career capital

What's in this module?

This module contains 13 lessons covering Python setup in Google Colab, pandas fundamentals, data wrangling, consistency checks, combining datasets, deriving variables, groupby aggregation, data visualisation, Excel reporting, and AI-augmented analysis with Gemini. Students work on a single real-world project throughout — analysing NHS A&E quality indicators — and graduate with a complete portfolio piece including annotated notebooks, an Excel report, and a stakeholder PowerPoint. The final two lessons focus on personal branding and career positioning: building a GitHub portfolio, writing a compelling LinkedIn profile, and presenting analytical work to employers.

Lessons

#	Lesson	What you learn
1	Intro to Programming for Data Analysts	Why Python, how it fits alongside Excel and SQL, setting up Google Colab
2	Google Colab & Python Data Types	Libraries, integers, floats, strings, booleans — your project brief introduced
3	Intro to Pandas	Loading NHS data, DataFrames, descriptive statistics with real A&E data
4	Data Wrangling & Subsetting	Renaming columns, converting data types, filtering, creating subsets, exporting CSV
5	Data Consistency Checks	Missing values, suppressed data, duplicates — what they mean in an NHS context
6	Combining & Exporting Data	Merging three NHS files with left and inner joins, understanding unmatched rows, pickle format
7	Deriving New Variables	If-statements, for-loops, loc() — creating NHS performance flags and clinical thresholds
8	Grouping & Aggregating	groupby(), agg(), transform() — ranking and benchmarking NHS Trusts by region
9	Intro to Data Visualisation	Bar charts, line charts, histograms, scatter plots — built around real NHS business questions
10	Coding Etiquette & Excel Reporting	Clean code practices, population flow diagram, 7-sheet stakeholder Excel report
11	AI-Augmented Analytics with Gemini	Prompt engineering for analysis, AI-generated code verification, narrative writing with Gemini
12	Portfolio Project	End-to-end NHS analytics project, polished notebooks, GitHub, stakeholder presentation
13	Personal Branding for Data Analysts	LinkedIn profile, GitHub presence, interview preparation, career positioning

What will you build?

Every lesson builds one piece of your final project. By the end of the module you will have produced three deliverables — the same outputs a professional data analyst would hand to a client:

Deliverable	What it contains
Google Colab Notebooks	Annotated, portfolio-ready notebooks covering data cleaning, joining, analysis, and visualisation
Excel Report (7 sheets)	Title page, population flow, consistency checks, wrangling steps, column derivations, visualisations, recommendations
PowerPoint Presentation	5–7 slide stakeholder deck presenting key findings and recommendations from your NHS analysis

Frequently asked questions