Calvin Gao

Quick Read:

  • Majors: Economics, Psychology, Data Science (Wesleyan University)

  • Current Position: Tableau/Alteryx Consultant at The Information Lab (NYC)

  • Additional Skills: Tableau, Alteryx, R, SQL


Details:

Calvin began his data journey at Wesleyan University's Quantitative Analysis Center (QAC), where he discovered a passion for unraveling its complexities. Post-graduation, armed with degrees in Economics, Psychology, and Applied Data Science, he pursued further enrichment at The Information Lab where he became a Tableau Certified Data Analyst and Alteryx Designer Advanced Certified professional, a testament to his fervor for mastering data tools.

Calvin is now a Tableau/Alteryx Consultant at The Information Lab working with clients to find business insights and provide value from Tableau dashboards, decreasing time to insight, and maintaining important data refreshes.

Calvin has been working for 7 months with a financial institution as a Data Analyst - Tableau Specialist. During this time, Calvin has created a production dashboard - saving a Data Analyst 3 hours of time each week, enhanced 5 production dashboards - providing further value for stakeholders as they use the dashboard, wrote documentation files with step by step on how to maintain up to date dashboards - creating a consistent format and Tableau Prep flows for future Data Analysts who needs to refresh dashboards, reduced dashboard load time by following Tableau's workbook optimization guidelines and successfully reduced average dashboard load times compared to the previous quarter. In addition, Calvin has been maintaining the data refreshes of production dashboards, keeping the data up to date while monitoring the overall Tableau Cloud site to troubleshoot any errors within in regards to data refreshes.

Certifications

Blog Posts

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Mon 13 May 2024 | Calvin Gao
Catalyzing Business Insights | Leveraging Alteryx Cloud's Machine Learning
Recently, I attended an Alteryx Cloud Training where Alteryx Trainers demonstrated the Machine Learning Product
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Thu 02 May 2024 | Calvin Gao
How to Highlight a Bar when Selecting
Sometimes there is a desire to select a bar and highlight the bar selected. In this case, every time a sub category is selected, the corresponding bar turns to a color that distinguishes it from the other bars. To make this, we will use parameter actions
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Wed 07 Feb 2024 | Calvin Gao
How to make Drill Down Bar Charts in Tableau (One Level)
To make a one level drill down bar chart in tableau, we can use parameters or actions. Parameters:  Let’s say, the goal is to make a drill down bar chart using superstore from category to subcategory. Every time a category is clicked, the table opens up the corresponding sub category
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Tue 13 Feb 2024 | Calvin Gao
Dynamic Up Down Arrows and Indicators
Have you seen KPIs with those dynamic indicators? Those indicators can change to green text with an up arrow when the value indicates a positive value. When negative values are shown, the indicator is visualized with a down arrow and red text
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Fri 29 Mar 2024 | Calvin Gao
Dashboard Week Day 5 Iowa Liquor Sales 2017 to 2019
Today’s dataset was the same dataset given to our Coach Valerija’s final interview when she applied for the Data School Program. It includes data of Iowa Liquor Sales and actually seems to resemble the superstore dataset very much
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Thu 28 Mar 2024 | Calvin Gao
Dashboard Week Day 4 Squirrel Data
Today’s data was about squirrel sightings. This was actually a version of data similar to the final dashboard application for DSNY2. However, DSNY2 has a larger dataset where sightings were reported for several days in Central Park
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Wed 27 Mar 2024 | Calvin Gao
Dashboard Week Day 3 Yellow Taxi Parsing a Parquet File in Alteryx
Today was a data prep heavy task. The dataset came from the TLC Trip Record Data, specifically the yellow taxi trip records where the files came in a file type of ‘parquet’
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Tue 26 Mar 2024 | Calvin Gao
Dashboard Week Day 2 UNICEF
Day 2 out of 5 is currently underway. Today we were given a direction of the UNICEF data but no specific dataset. We are to choose a dataset of our interest and make a dashboard under the same guidelines as day 1. After sourcing through the datasets, I landed my eyes on water and hygiene data
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Mon 25 Mar 2024 | Calvin Gao
Dashboard Week Day 1
Day 1 of dashboard week was about the US College Scorecards. This data provides information about all the institutions, colleges, and universities in the United States along with information about the students demographic and family income
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Wed 07 Feb 2024 | Calvin Gao
Dynamic Top N Filter
When you want to provide a bar chart with a limited number of bars, the Top N filter is an option. The Top N filter allows a user to select the number of bars they would like to see on a bar chart and sorted by a predefined field. Let’s start with a bar chart of cities ordered by their sales
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Sun 28 Jan 2024 | Calvin Gao
Order of Operations (Tableau Version)
As you start to incorporate more advanced filters and interactivity in your dashboards, you might notice Tableau is not working the way you expect it to. Let’s use a superstore example, you made a bar chart of the sum of sales categorized by state and city
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Wed 13 Mar 2024 | Calvin Gao
Optimizing Relationships in Tableau
While it is useful to have relationships in Tableau, it is important to understand how the joins work and how it can be optimized for performance
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Wed 13 Mar 2024 | Calvin Gao
The Data Model
Any part of a data analysis or data visualization requires the data itself to be connected. In Tableau, there are several ways of joining data if there are multiple files or multiple excel sheets to obtain an appropriate data model
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Wed 07 Feb 2024 | Calvin Gao
Making a US Map (in Hexagons)
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Wed 07 Feb 2024 | Calvin Gao
Where are the Up and Down Arrows? ↑↓▲▼
Have you ever seen a Tableau dashboard where there are up and down arrows indicating when something is good or bad? If you have a windows, here is where you can find those arrows: They are in a software called Character Map
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Wed 07 Feb 2024 | Calvin Gao
Adding Custom Shapes to Tableau Desktop
If you ever felt tired of Tableau’s default shapes, then this blog is for you! There are actually a way to include custom shapes into tableau desktop and here is how: First download a free icon/image/shape you want to add to your tableau desktop
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Wed 07 Feb 2024 | Calvin Gao
Calculations and Parameters
As you dive into Tableau and begin discovering the options to create more metrics, you will come across options such as calculations, parameters and even sets. These options build the foundations for many of the interactivity that comes with Parameter Actions and Set Actions
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Fri 26 Jan 2024 | Calvin Gao
DATEPART and DATETRUNC
One of the slightly confusing concepts in Tableau would be the DATEPART and DATETRUNC functions. The two functions appear to provide similar functions, however, there are still important distinguishing features between the two
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Tue 26 Dec 2023 | Calvin Gao
Data School - Alteryx 101
On week three, the cohort tackled Alteryx and prepared for the Designer Core Certification. This certification tests an individual’s knowledge on the core toolset of Alteryx Desktop Designer and utilises this toolset to analyse real life problems
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Wed 13 Dec 2023 | Calvin Gao
Psychology in Data Visualization? Gestalt Psychology
The Gestalt Principles or the Gestalt Psychology explains that the human brain tends to perceive objects or visual elements as a whole when certain principles are applied. This happens such that the human brain will fill in details on visual elements even when they do not exist
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Tue 23 Jan 2024 | Calvin Gao
Tableau, TIL (and Alteryx)
Within the data community are the Tableau and Alteryx Community. Let’s dive in one by one: Tableau Community #DataFam As you get started with your tableau journey, you might be tipping your toes into Tableau Public first
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Tue 23 Jan 2024 | Calvin Gao
What is the Data Ink Ratio?
Data Ink Ratio, defined by Edward Tufte, would be the amount of ink used to represent the data over the amount of ink on the dashboard A higher data ink ratio means that more ink is dedicated to conveying information, leading to a clearer and more effective visualization
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Fri 12 Jan 2024 | Calvin Gao
Navigating Data Visualization: A Guide to Chart Junk Awareness
When crafting a dashboard, a critical consideration is the presence of chart junk. Coined by Edward Tufte, chart junk refers to superfluous elements in visualizations that contribute little or nothing to understanding and, in some cases, may even impede viewers
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Wed 13 Dec 2023 | Calvin Gao
What is it like Applying to DSNY?
I first heard about the Data School New York from Collin who was presenting at an event. At first sight, I saw the words the Data School and wondered if this was an academic program
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