Why this matters
Many first data jobs in Ghana involve entering records: registers, survey forms, stock sheets, patient cards. Employers want people who type accurately and lay data out so it can be checked and analysed. Every later skill in this track, from pivot tables to SQL, works far better on tidy data.
What tidy means
Tidy data follows three simple rules:
- One row per record. One pupil, one sale, one household visit.
- One column per fact. Name, date, community, amount. Never two facts in one cell.
- One table per kind of thing. Keep a list of pupils separate from a list of daily attendance.
Common mistakes
Here is an invented attendance sheet a teacher in Walewale might start with:
| Pupil | Mon | Tue | Notes | |---|---|---|---| | Amina Y. | P | A | sick, came Wed | | issahaku | present | P | |
Problems: the name is shortened in one row and lowercase in another, "P" and "present" mean the same thing, and the notes cell hides an extra attendance record. The total row at the bottom (not shown) would also get counted as a pupil by mistake.
A tidy version has columns pupil_id, pupil_name, date, status, with one row for each pupil on each day and status always written as Present or Absent. It looks longer, but now you can count absences per pupil or per day with one formula.