Alexander Wood

Alex’s background includes a first-class degree in Economics with Econometrics. Following his degree he worked as an MI Analyst for a Lloyds of London Syndicate, where he was responsible for regular c-suite reporting and assisting with migrating reports from SSRS to Power BI.

During his time at the Data School so far, he has helped a diverse range of clients including data centre providers, sport’s national governing bodies and high end fashion retailers.

Whilst working for clients some highlights include:

  • Transformed a 6+ hour weekly manual process into an automated Tableau Prep flow

  • Used R to Connect and transform data from APIs into structured data sources ready for analysis

  • Created alignment in recording data between independent teams across three regions, resulting in supported decision making

  • Analysed office attendance patterns in Tableau to assist in decisions being made about correct office sizing

  • Created a spatial analysis of telecommunications networks in the UK using alteryx to highlight opportunities for expansion

  • Project managed a team of 7 to deliver a Google Analytics 4 (GA4) project to improve search engine optimization

Alex continues to learn and expand his skills by working on Preppin’ Data challenges and other personal projects using SQL, R and Python. All of which can be found on his GitHub.

Outside of work Alex enjoys playing tennis, football, and likes to travel.

Blog Posts

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Thu 14 Dec 2023 | Alexander Wood
Can ChatGPT Make Realistic Synthetic Data
In this blog I outline the ways in which you can write better prompts to ChatGPT so that you can generate better synthetic data sets.
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Tue 24 Oct 2023 | Alexander Wood
SQL - CTE's and Sub-Queries
Both CTE's and Sub-Queries are ways of using the results of one query and using them in another query. We will start off by looking at CTE's CTE's Lets start with defining what CTE stands for Common Table Expression
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Fri 01 Dec 2023 | Alexander Wood
Dashboard Week - Day 4 & 5
Thursday morning we were tasked with applying for the Data + Movies challenge, Normally dashboard week tasks are due to be complete within the day. This time it was slightly different, we would have 2 days to work on it. We were also tempted by the tableau prize of a free T-Shirt
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Wed 29 Nov 2023 | Alexander Wood
Dashboard Week - Day 3
Today's challenge was to connect to the AviationAPI and use alteryx to perform some spatial analysis, we had to use the reporting tools that are in alteryx and then publish our work to the server
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Tue 28 Nov 2023 | Alexander Wood
Dashboard Week - Day 2
Today we were tasked with looking at income data from the OECD. But todays requirements were that we would have to do everything in Power BI and Power Query. We had to choose 2 data sets from the link (https://data-explorer.oecd
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Mon 27 Nov 2023 | Alexander Wood
Dashboard Week - Day 1
Today is the 1st day of dashboard week. Today we were tasked to analyse inflation data from the ONS. In the brief that Jenny gave us, she specified that we could bring in additional data sources to further our analysis
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Mon 23 Oct 2023 | Alexander Wood
The Basics of RegEx
Here you can find the basics of how to use RegEx. RegEx is a powerful way of allowing us to work with strings, it gives us the ability to be precise and extract particular parts of a string. Within this blog you will find cheat sheets and also a few basic examples
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Mon 23 Oct 2023 | Alexander Wood
API's in Alteryx
This blog is running through the steps that we took to learn what and how to use an API. For the blog I showed how to use an API in Alteryx but the same steps can be followed in PowerBI and Tableau Prep.
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Tue 17 Oct 2023 | Alexander Wood
Data Discovery
Data discovery has really helped me when it comes to working on client projects. It's a great opportunity to understand what the data I have actually is and if it is suitable for the analysis that I have been tasked with.
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Thu 19 Oct 2023 | Alexander Wood
SQL - Pivoting and Unpivoting data
Helping to better show how data transformations can be done in SQL. Specifically this blog aims at showing how to Pivot and Unpivot your data. This is such a useful technic to master as it is an essential aspect of the data cleaning and preparation process
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Mon 16 Oct 2023 | Alexander Wood
SQL - Fundamentals
This blog aims to help you better understand how to use SQL and just as importantly better document your work. It makes the world of difference when you have documentation that is easy to understand. You can refer back to it in the future or make handing over your work a smoother process
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Sun 22 Oct 2023 | Alexander Wood
Tableau - Parameter Actions
Dashboard interactivity can be a great way of getting the user to really rely and use the dashboard. It also provides them with the opportunity to dive deeper into aspects of the data that they find interesting. Here is how to set a parameter action to add interactivity
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Fri 18 Aug 2023 | Alexander Wood
Pre-attentive Attributes
Pre-Attentive Attributes are so useful to data analyst as they help us draw the users focus to the aspects of a chart or visualization that we want them to be interested in. The ten attributes are shown in the picture and can be used in a variety of situations to help tell a story
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Mon 04 Sep 2023 | Alexander Wood
Reapplying for the Data School (But in Power BI)
At the end of my 4th week at the data school, and after a week of Power BI training I was tasked with recreating my data school application (initially done using Tableau Public) in Power BI. Overall I am really happy with the outcome and feel that I have a far better understanding of Power BI
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Wed 30 Aug 2023 | Alexander Wood
Power BI - Using Parameters to Change Charts
In Power BI you can use parameters to change the view of a chart. Its a way of adding interactivity to a chart, allowing the user to explore the data and when done appropriately it can really enhance the user experience.
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Thu 31 Aug 2023 | Alexander Wood
Power BI - First Makeover Monday
This is my first attempt at a Makeover Monday in Power Bi. A really good test of my Power BI ability after a few days learning Power Query and then a day spent on Power BI Desktop. Who knows, there might be more Power BI Makeover Mondays to come.
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Thu 31 Aug 2023 | Alexander Wood
Power BI - How to add a visual into a tooltip
Adding visuals into a tooltip can be a good way to show users further information to the graphs without adding too many charts to the initial visual. Other use cases for visuals in tooltips can include showing breakdowns of the data behind the visual
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Tue 22 Aug 2023 | Alexander Wood
Power Query - Managing Workflows
Managing Workflows - The steps work in a sequential order. You can edit steps by clicking on the cogs on the right. And you can see what a particular step has done by selecting it in the list. It is important to remember that the flow works in sequential order
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Wed 16 Aug 2023 | Alexander Wood
Why Planning Matters
Planning is an important part of making a dashboard or a workflow. It is important to fully understand what you need to do so that you don't waste time working on something you don't end up using. Planning really helps focus your work efforts.
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