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Data analyst

Checks data and turns it into clear findings that help a team make informed decisions.

What a day looks like

Imagine an analyst at a delivery service investigating an increase in cancelled orders. This is an illustrative workday, not an interview with a particular employee. The morning starts with defining the question: do cancellations before payment count? Should the team compare cities, hours or returning customers? Without shared definitions, two carefully prepared reports can disagree. The analyst then obtains an authorised dataset and checks dates, missing values and duplicate records. Finding why an order appears twice can take longer than drawing the chart.

Next comes a SQL query or spreadsheet calculation. The analyst calculates the cancellation rate rather than just the total: more cancellations may simply reflect more orders. A few charts reveal that the change is concentrated in one district. That observation does not establish its cause. The analyst checks whether event tracking changed and discusses the findings with the operations team. Missing information and uncertainty are written down rather than hidden.

In the afternoon, the analyst updates a dashboard and asks a colleague to review the calculation. At a meeting, the findings are explained in ordinary language: where the issue appears, what remains unknown and what could be checked next. Before finishing, the analyst saves the query, metric definitions and limitations so another person can reproduce the work. The job rewards curiosity, patience with repetitive checks and willingness to abandon an attractive explanation when the evidence does not support it.

Try it yourself this week

  • 30 minutes

    Make your own monthly budget on paper

    1. Write down where your money comes from: pocket money, gifts, a part-time job. If you don't have any money, make up an amount for practice.
    2. Write down what you usually spend money on and split it into needs and wants.
    3. Make a table: income, spending, what's left.
    4. Work out how you'd save for a goal, for example a new phone or a trip, and how fast you'd get there.

    What you'll learn about yourself: Whether you like putting numbers in order and deciding what to spend money on.

  • 40 minutes

    Come up with a small business and work out if it would pay off

    1. Choose an idea a school student could do: baking for a school fair, helping people with their phones, taking photos at a graduation party.
    2. Write down who would buy and why they'd buy from you in particular.
    3. Make a table: what the money goes on, what the price is, how many sales you'd need to get your costs back. Don't buy anything — this is a calculation on paper.
    4. Find two similar offers online and compare your idea with them. Write down what was more interesting: coming up with it, doing the numbers or imagining how you'd sell it.

    What you'll learn about yourself: Whether turning an idea into a plan with numbers excites you — and whether the chance that buyers say no puts you off.

What you can do next

  1. Next 3 months

    • Build a small table

      Use 20–30 fictional purchases with a date, category and amount. Check missing values and explain three observations.

    • Compare two calculations

      Calculate category totals by hand and with formulas. Explain every difference.

    • Draw an honest chart

      Create two charts from the same data. Label the units and explain which is easier to understand.

  2. In six months

    • Learn basic SQL

      Practise SELECT, filtering and grouping on a training database. Save queries with explanations.

    • Explore an open dataset

      Choose public data without personal identifiers. Record its source, your question, cleaning and limitations.

  3. In a year

    • Prepare two small studies

      For each, include a table, chart and one-page explanation. Ask someone to check whether it is understandable.

    • Compare degree programmes

      Read two official curricula and ask admissions about current requirements and practical training.

What it pays

No verified information is available in this section yet.

Where to study

How to get into college

College gets you a profession faster than university. You can apply after grade 9 or after grade 11.

  • Colleges accept students both after grade 9 and after grade 11. After grade 9 you study longer — about 3 years 10 months; after grade 11, about 2 years 10 months. The exact length depends on the college and the specialty.
    Source: kchk.edu.kz (opens in a new tab)
  • About 80% of students admitted to colleges in the 2024/25 school year study on a state order, which means in state-funded places (in 2023/24 it was about 70%). But each college and each specialty has its own number of state-funded places.
    Source: inbusiness.kz (opens in a new tab)
  • There are also paid colleges. For example, training as a nurse at ADILMED costs 450,000 ₸ per year. Check the price and conditions on the college's website.
    Source: adilmed.kz (opens in a new tab)
UNT: which subjects to take for university

The UNT (Unified National Testing) is Kazakhstan's national university entrance test. You need it to get into university after grade 11.

  • The UNT 2026 has three compulsory subjects: History of Kazakhstan, Reading Literacy and Mathematical Literacy. On top of these, you take two profile subjects, chosen to match your specialty.
    Source: testcenter.kz (opens in a new tab)
  • In total, the test has 120 questions (maximum 140 points) and you get 4 hours. The format is the same as in 2025.
    Source: testcenter.kz (opens in a new tab)
  • Profile subjects depend on the group of specialties. For example: information technology — Mathematics and Computer Science; nursing and veterinary medicine — Biology and Chemistry; electrical engineering — Mathematics and Physics; law — World History and Fundamentals of Law. The full list is published by the National Testing Center.
    Source: testcenter.kz (opens in a new tab)
  • For creative specialties (for example, media and design), you take History of Kazakhstan and Reading Literacy through the UNT, and two creative exams at the university itself.
    Source: testcenter.kz (opens in a new tab)
  • Some universities have their own admission rules. Nazarbayev University, for example, requires a UNT score of at least 85, a GPA of 4.0 and English at IELTS 6.0 level.
    Source: nu.edu.kz (opens in a new tab)

Courses and opportunities

Opportunities near this field

Can you work before you turn 18?

Under Kazakhstan's Labour Code, teenagers can work, but with limits.

History of the career

Data analysis grew out of statistics and practical work with observations. In 1962, John Tukey published The Future of Data Analysis; the University of Texas bibliography records its author, date and journal. This is a useful landmark, rather than a birth date for every analytical profession. Today, data analyst covers several roles, including product, sales and public-sector analysis. O*NET describes the related Business Intelligence Analyst occupation in terms of database queries, reports and patterns. Computing accelerated calculations, but the core purpose remains to obtain dependable observations and explain what can be concluded from them.

Source: cs.utexas.edu (opens in a new tab)

Well-known people in this field

Article sources

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