If you want to be a data analyst, you should work to become as good at SQL as possible.

1. SELECT

What a surprise! I need to choose what data I want to return.

2. FROM

Again, no shock here. I gotta choose what table I am pulling my data from.

3. WHERE

This is also pretty basic, but I almost always filter the data to whatever range I need and filter the data to whatever condition I’m looking for.

4. JOIN

This may surprise you that the next one isn’t one of the other core SQL clauses, but at least for my work, I utilize some kind of join in almost every query I write.

5. Calculations

This isn’t necessarily a function of SQL, but I write a lot of calculations in my queries. Common examples include finding the time between two dates and multiplying and dividing values to get what I need.

Add operators and a couple data cleaning functions and that’s 80%+ of the SQL I write on the job.