Dan Bostrom

Dan is a Tableau/Alteryx Consultant at The Information Lab where he uses Alteryx and SQL to transform data and Tableau to bring it to life. He's particularly passionate about optimizing and automating data processes, which inspired his Workflow Optimization in Alteryx blog that was subsequently published on the Alteryx community site. He most recently put these skills to use during an engagement with a major insurance company, saving over 100 hours of manual computation monthly.

Prior to working at The Information Lab, he completed a dual bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Italian at Binghamton University. After deciding to pursue a career in data, he self-studied Python and SQL and then completed a data science bootcamp, where he first heard about the Data School.

His interest in data traces back to his elementary school days, when he read the morning newspaper daily to keep up with baseball stats. Outside of work, he spends his time running, reading, and gaming.

Certifications

Blog Posts

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Wed 17 Apr 2024 | Daniel Bostrom
Workflow Optimization in Alteryx
When you're first learning Alteryx, you're likely working with small datasets where performance is not an issue. Often the datasets are so small that you can hardly notice a difference in run time between a workflow with 2 tools and a workflow with 20
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Fri 29 Mar 2024 | Daniel Bostrom
Dashboard Week - Liquor Sales in Iowa
For our final day of Dashboard Week (and training!) our coach Val gave us the dataset she used for her application to the Data School (you can find the data here), concerning liquor sales in Iowa. Our instructions weren't as specific as they've been for the previous days
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Thu 28 Mar 2024 | Daniel Bostrom
Dashboard Week - NYC Squirrel Census
On March 1st, 2020, the latest NYC Squirrel Census took place. 72 volunteer census takers flocked to parks throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn to observe and document squirrel appearance and behavior, taking important notes along the way, like "Pretty fat" and "Great jumper"
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Tue 26 Mar 2024 | Daniel Bostrom
Dashboard Week - UNICEF
Today our assignment was to work with data from UNICEF. We were given a link and told to download any dataset (or datasets) we wanted
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Mon 25 Mar 2024 | Daniel Bostrom
Dashboard Week - College Scorecard
Our final week of training - Dashboard Week - begins today. Each day, we'll be presented with a different challenge and will have to make a dashboard and write a blog (and possibly do some web scraping and data prep) by 3:30, at which time we'll present what we've done
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Tue 13 Feb 2024 | Daniel Bostrom
Alteryx Challenge 9 Tutorial
Today we'll be going through Alteryx Challenge 9 together, which you can find here. The challenge data contains people's names and a Count field. The objective is to filter the data so that only the people whose counts are among the highest 5 remain
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Mon 08 Jan 2024 | Daniel Bostrom
Tableau Tutorial - Parameter Actions
Interactivity is part of what makes Tableau so great. The end user can select values for things like parameters, filters, and sets. If you've already learned about these, there are still things you can learn to make your dashboard even more interactive
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Wed 03 Jan 2024 | Daniel Bostrom
#probablyadaftquestionbut - Turning Off Grid Lines in Tableau
When people at the Data School (and the Information Lab more generally) want to pose a question to the company as a whole that they feel they shouldn't have to ask, they occasionally use the hashtag #probablyadaftquestionbut (can you tell it's a British company?)
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Fri 15 Dec 2023 | Daniel Bostrom
Tableau Tutorial - How to Make a Dual Axis Chart
You may find yourself wanting to put two charts together on the same set of axes in order to compare two different fields. In the world indicators dataset that comes with Tableau, there are two separate fields for life expectancy - one for women and one for men
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Thu 28 Dec 2023 | Daniel Bostrom
Alteryx Challenge 336 Tutorial
Each week, Alteryx posts a challenge for members of the community to solve. They provide a file containing the input data as well as the desired output. The task is to create a workflow that gets you from point A to point B. I'll be walking you through Challenge 336, which can be found here
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Fri 15 Dec 2023 | Daniel Bostrom
Tableau Tutorial - How to Make a Donut Chart
There's a strong preference for donut charts over pie charts in Tableau. Donut charts are easier to interpret and look better. You may even choose to use the empty space inside them with a label for the chart. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to make them
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Tue 12 Dec 2023 | Daniel Bostrom
Tableau Tutorial - Dealing With Exceptions in Tooltip Text
I ran into an issue while making my dashboard for the first round of applications to the Data School. I had a line chart with the number of bike crashes by year. In the tooltip, I added in the percent change in number of crashes from the previous year
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Thu 07 Dec 2023 | Daniel Bostrom
My First Week at the Data School
After weeks of anticipation, I've finally started working at the Data School and my first week is drawing to a close. If you're considering working here, you probably want to know what you're getting into so here's a quick overview of what we've done so far
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Mon 11 Dec 2023 | Daniel Bostrom
Data School Application Tips
So you want to join the Data School? Having been in your shoes a little over a month ago, I still have the application process fresh in my memory. With my first week in the books, I've decided to look back at the application process and share some tips on how you can make your application stand out
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