BIDA study guide
BIDA · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The Business Intelligence & Data Analyst (BIDA®) Certification is a self-paced, fully online credential from the Corporate Finance Institute (CFI) that builds practical skills in data analysis, business intelligence, and data-driven decision-making. CFI positions it for aspiring data analysts, BI specialists, finance professionals, and students who want to apply analytics to real business problems; CFI states there are no formal prerequisites, and that all a learner needs is a computer, Excel 2016 or newer, and an internet connection. The BIDA study guide has 5 sections and about 1,719 words.
01Data Transformation & Automation
Data transformation and automation covers the pipeline from raw source to analysis-ready data: extraction, cleaning, joining, reshaping, and scheduling. Candidates should understand ETL versus ELT (transform-before-load versus load-then-transform with warehouse compute), idempotency (a job rerun produces the same result), incremental versus full refresh, deduplication with window functions, pivoting and unpivoting (long/wide reshaping), type coercion, null handling, and orchestration concepts like dependencies, retries, and backfills.
374 words, about 2 min02Data Visualization
Data visualization questions test whether you can choose an appropriate chart, encode data honestly, and design dashboards that answer a question. Core concepts: chart selection by data type and intent (bar for categorical comparison, line for trends over time, scatter for correlation between two measures, histogram for distribution, box plot for spread and outliers, heatmap for density across two dimensions).
348 words, about 2 min03Data Modeling
Data modeling covers how data is structured for storage and analysis. Candidates should know normalization (1NF atomic values, 2NF no partial dependency on part of a composite key, 3NF no transitive dependency) and denormalization for performance.
347 words, about 2 min04Coding
Coding questions test practical SQL and scripting logic for data work. Expect SQL: SELECT order of execution (FROM, WHERE, GROUP BY, HAVING, SELECT, ORDER BY, LIMIT), joins, subqueries, common table expressions, window functions (ROW NUMBER, RANK, LAG/LEAD, running SUM OVER), CASE expressions, and aggregation with HAVING.
320 words, about 2 min05Statistics
Statistics questions cover descriptive and inferential concepts used to interpret data. Know measures of center (mean, median, mode) and spread (range, variance, standard deviation, interquartile range), and when the median is preferred for skewed data.
330 words, about 2 min