Big data

Tell me about this "big data" meme and how I can get a job as a "data analyst".

Learn SQL, Python, and take a data analytics course. You could probably do all this in 2 weeks.

>earn 20K more per year

Make sure to exaggerate your experience of course, and be able to make a case for it.

Your job after that is to not get fired then. If you get a position where you're the only analytics guy, you've lucked out.

How much math is needed to be a data analyst? I was under the impression that you need to know calculus, linear algebra, and advanced statistics to be competent.

Lol, no. Just pretend like you do.. Go watch the Khan Academy videos at 1.5x speed.

If you're serious though, yeah you do.

1: Sign up for a Coursera class and never login again.
2: Ignore hundreds of years of statistics.
3: Convince yourself that you can eliminate sampling error by sampling more of the same thing from the same place at the same time.
4: Make large documents with lots or colorful graphics that don't draw any meaningful conclusions.
5: Keep reminding yourself that one right prediction among a hundred bad ones is still a success.
6: Collect more data.
7: Collect even more data.
8: If you collect enough data, you will eventually build a perfectly accurate model.
9: Use search term trends for flu symptoms to predict when winter is coming.
10: Congradulations, you are now a data scientist.

How often is it all used. Is getting an internship as a data analyst feasible for someone who's currently taking calc 1.

Calc 1 has little usage outside of Engineering & Graduate level work.

You missed out, user. We've already hit peak hype on 'Data Science/Big Data'. All the complex stuff is already being simplified for use by non-technical people. Soon it will just be another bunch of MBA's bullshitting while using Tableau instead of Excel/Powerpoint and using whatever the default custoner segments someone else set up for them in Adobe Analytics. Unless you go to a Fintech or google/amazon/Microsoft you won't be doing anything interesting.

so other than knowing SQL and Python what are the minimum hard and soft skills expected from a junior data analyst