Knowing how to use data is important, and there are a ton of courses out there to learn how to be a data scientist. The cost of those courses ranges from thousands for a certificate from a university to a dozen or so dollars a month on subscriptions. I’ve also found a middle ground of self paced learning that is free; courses and the utility of training directly from the developers of data analytics tools. I want to focus on two of them, each allowing a full year of scholarship to become acquainted with their systems for not cost. The first is ArcGIS a geographic mapping system for arranging and displaying data on maps. This is a particularly important one for those of us who are in logistical endeavors. Tableau, on the other hand is designed to create reports of data sets making those sets easily accessible for manipulation. Both of these are wonderful tools for telling stories based on observations made from data sets. These tools are enterprise ready, and spend their own money making training so that their tools are recognized by a broad spectrum of people in the industry. They also have their own certification programs, some of which are free, for you to learn on your own to use their products. This can be a great boost to your resume if you want to work with data, which is a field that is expected to grow in demand (by thirty percent according to BLS projections).