Data Science Fundamentals SQL I Introduction to Queries and BigQuery

About

An introduction to SQL, from foundational concepts to slightly more advanced techniques, using Google BigQuery as the practical platform.

This module covers what relational databases are, the set up of BigQuery, and basic SQL queries, ordering and aliasing, as well as basic aggregations.

Learning Objectives

You will be able to:

Explain what SQL is.
Use Google BigQuery to access data via SQL.
Write and execute a SQL query, including SELECT, FROM, LIMIT, and DISTINCT.
Order data using ORDER BY.
Alias tables in SQL using AS.
Practice writing aggregate functions: MIN, MAX, SUM, AVG, and COUNT.
Understand the order of operations in SQL.

Content

Topic	About
Relational Database & SQL Concepts (Slides)	• Database structure • Table relationships • Primary/Foreign keys • Common data types
Set Up BigQuery	• Big Query basics • Database connection • Schema reading
SQL Fundamentals (SQL-I)	• `SELECT`, `FROM`, `LIMIT` • `DISTINCT` clauses • `ORDER BY` sorting • `AS` aliasing • `COUNT`, `SUM`, `AVG`

Each section includes exercises and stretch challenges for practice, using the NCAA Basketball dataset in BigQuery.

Prerequisites

Familiarity with data types (e.g., strings, integers, floats, booleans)

References

📖 Reference Materials

Important note

Please ignore the _layouts folder and the config.yml file in the root of this repo. They are needed to make sure the repo renders well; please don’t change them or delete them and your repo will work fine :)