David Sánchez Martín

David Sánchez Martín

As a biomedical scientist with +10 years of experience in cancer research, David has found a need to make existing data available and accessible. From clinical trials to genomic sequence, plenty of information ready to be explored exists already, but the layman may be daunted by the complex jargon, sophisticated methodology and the vast upfront investment in training needed to get useful information.

He sees Tableau and Alteryx as a way of empowering scientists to do visual analytics and to develop compelling stories to communicate the findings to different audiences – from the world expert to the general public (usually funding the research).

In his spare time David enjoys rock climbing, sailing, a good book and going out for dinner.

Blog Posts

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Fri 26 Jan 2018 | David Sánchez
Some Numbers @DS -- Reflection on 4 (fast) months
Tempus fugit. One more day and the “in room training” at DS will be over. Ready to roam the world and put to good practice what we have been learning these four months
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Sun 14 Jan 2018 | David Sánchez
Revelations – densification using bins and Index in Tableau. Case in point: normal distribution.
[https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/content/images/wordpress/2018/01/720px-Normal_Distribution_PDF.svg1_.png] Normal Distributions as an example of equations to draw via densification. Image from Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution]
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Tue 02 Jan 2018 | David Sánchez
Tableau for everyone
[https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/content/images/wordpress/2018/01/trescolumnas
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Fri 22 Dec 2017 | David Sánchez
Alteryx treating single character strings as boolean - when and how to fix it
I recently came across an unexpected (for me!) behaviour of Alteryx: I had built a batch macro that was receiving single letter arguments (a-z) in the control parameter, and the macro was working OK sometimes, but not all the time
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Sun 17 Dec 2017 | David Sánchez
Reflections on Dashboard Week - making quick decisions with insufficient data
[https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/content/images/wordpress/2017/12/Kriebel-vs-DS7.gif]Come on, Andy, is that everything you got? *Darth Kriebelis trademarked by George [https://public.tableau.com/profile/george
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Fri 15 Dec 2017 | David Sánchez
RegEx saves the day - Cheese day of Dashboard week
Today we had the opportunity of using RegEx once again. How have we been able to live so long without knowing & using it is a question for another day. Suffice it to say, for me, despite my aversion to cheese, the day was worth it just because of the data prep part
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Wed 13 Dec 2017 | David Sánchez
Sometimes you have to do what you have to do - Dashboard Week Day 2
Sometimes you have to do what you have to do. We were supposed to work with story points to tell an analytical insight today, using data about the different expectations across the globe when finding a romantic partner (from YouGov.uk). Good news: data prep was much easier than yesterday
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Mon 11 Dec 2017 | David Sánchez
Every second counts - Dashboard week Day 1
First impressions of the first day of Dashboard week [https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/andy-kriebel/dashboard-week-v7/]. 1. Andy seems to be really enjoying this. (And I feel shivers down my spine when I hear him not-so-quietly laughing while looking at tomorrow’s dataset…) 2
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Sat 09 Dec 2017 | David Sánchez
Making macros accessible in Alteryx 3 – Iterative Macro
Iterative macros are the topic of this third post in a series (1 [https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/david-sanchez/macros-alteryx-standard-macro/], 2 [https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/david-sanchez/alteryx-batch-macro/]) to better understand macros in Alteryx
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Mon 20 Nov 2017 | David Sánchez
Making macros accessible in Alteryx 2 – Batch Macro
This is the second post in a series aimed at making the three types of macros in Alteryx accessible to anyone: standard macro (see it here [https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/david-sanchez/macros-alteryx-standard-macro/]), batch macro and iterative macro. This post will cover: * Batch macro: 1
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Sun 12 Nov 2017 | David Sánchez
Monitoring access to data in Tableau Server - exportcrosstab and viewData
This post will help answering the question of who viewed the data (viewData) or downloaded the crosstabs (exportcrosstab) in any of the views. It will also provide a list of workbooks & views whose data is accessed in that way. Read below and then download the workbook [https://www.thedataschool.co
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Thu 09 Nov 2017 | David Sánchez
Only one view in my fullpdf tabcmd! Why?
You run tabcmd export myWorkbook/myView –fullpdf expecting to get a pdf with all the views from your Tableau Server; however, the fullpdf you just downloaded has only the myView in it. Why? The most likely reason is the small print in the Tableau help [https://onlinehelp.tableau
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Mon 30 Oct 2017 | David Sánchez
Making macros accessible in Alteryx 1 - Standard Macro
This is going to be a series of posts trying to make three types of macros in Alteryx accessible to anyone: Standard macro, batch macro and iterative macro
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Fri 20 Oct 2017 | David Sánchez
DS7 Tip Week - 45 Tableau and Alteryx tips
Tip week is over. One tip per day, 5 days a week, 9 of us (plus a couple of bonus tips in between). Here you have them, loosely sorted by the theme of the tip and order of posting. Follow the link at the bottom if you want to see a live demo of all the tips by the authors. Tips on Tools: 1
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Fri 20 Oct 2017 | David Sánchez
Cleaning your filters of Null
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Thu 19 Oct 2017 | David Sánchez
The power of Ctrl - zoom in calculation window
Zoom in into the calculation window: You know how you zoom in and out in Chrome when you press Ctrl while scrolling with your mouse’s wheel? Guess what happens in Tableau. Actually, several things may happen: * Nothing. * You zoom in/out of your chart, map, graph
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Wed 18 Oct 2017 | David Sánchez
Mobile layout and embedding your Viz
Your audience: We have already covered how to take into consideration our audience when we are preparing a visualization (see more details atCharlie’s [https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/charlie-daffern/three-considerations-planning-data-visualisations/] post and mine [https://www.thedataschool.co
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Tue 17 Oct 2017 | David Sánchez
Tableau Tip - Change the colour of the search box in a map
Before you ask the obvious, let me preface this post by answering with “Why not?? Tableau preferences can be used to create custom colour palettes, changing defaults, etc. It is useful that there are several “preferences.tps” files
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Mon 16 Oct 2017 | David Sánchez
Tableau Tip - Add colour from different sets to a single view
A quick tip for adding colour from two different sets stolen from Andy today: 1. Build your viz (here profit vs. sales, split by product ID). 2. Add your first set to detail. 3. Add your second set to detail. 4. Click on the dots for each set and add them to colour
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Sat 14 Oct 2017 | David Sánchez
Week 2 – 3 examples of points and lines: Spatial Tools in Alteryx
Week 2 of The Data School (TDS) is over. Introduction to Alteryx, working with parameters and hello Tableau Server. Blown away with the spatial tools, thus this post. I think it is fair to say that we all have been impressed with Alteryx. Complicated things seem easy(ier) now
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Mon 09 Oct 2017 | David Sánchez
NIH project - Week 1 with Tableau and Alteryx
Motivation This is a 16-week project to analyse 16 years (and $400 billion!!) of funding by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the largest organisation funding biomedical research
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Sat 07 Oct 2017 | David Sánchez
Week 1 – 3 take away messages - Infographic
Week 1 – 3 take away messages Week 1 of The Data School (TDS) is over. Perfect time to reflect and blog. There were many take away messages this week, some of them already covered by my cohort-mates (want to know how Tableau handles calculations? [https://www.thedataschool.co
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