Gaining Data Literacy with Power BI

The amount of data produced and collected in the world daily is growing dramatically. As of a 2017 study (https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/05/21/how-much-data-do-we-create-every-day-the-mind-blowing-stats-everyone-should-read/), the best estimates are that 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are generated each day, but that number is only expected to have grown since that study is a number of years old now and, more importantly, with the popularity of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. With such staggering numbers, it produces major problems for organizations trying to ensure their workforce has a high level of data literacy.

Not unlike learning a foreign language, data literacy is the concept of reading, understanding, and communicating with data. In its simplest form, someone with high data literacy skills would know how to take raw data provided to them and convert it into something they can use to drive business decisions. This is a skill that takes time to learn but once an individual masters it, they can become incredibly valuable to an organization. Without high levels of data literacy, organizations can seemingly make decisions on gut feelings without supporting data influencing business plans.