Ellie Mason

Ellie’s academic background is in geography culminating in a master in meteorology. Like any keen geographer she loves a good map, so naturally gravitates towards spatial data.

She has always been a numbers person, whether that be at her first job analysing weather models for the Met Office or more recently working with customer insights as a market researcher. She loved the analytical part of the roles and was enlightened by the impact data can have for an organisation. However, she felt limited by the more traditional tools used and thought there must be a better way to work with data.

In her spare time Ellie loves cooking, art and travelling, as well as playing tag rugby and running. She has recently completed her first half marathon race!

The Data School is the perfect opportunity for Ellie to bring together her personal love for art and design with the career aspects that have captivated her so far.

Blog Posts

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Fri 01 Feb 2019 | Ellie Mason
DS11 out...for now
The time is here! Today we, DS11, ‘graduate’ and finish the training portion of time at the Data School. The last four months have absolutely flown by. At the mid-point of the training I wrote about the things I’d learnt in the first half [https://www.thedataschool.co
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Fri 01 Feb 2019 | Ellie Mason
Statistics Series // 3. Classification
This is the final post in my Statistics Series and it will be focusing on classification. Previously in the series I’ve shown how to generate clusters in both Alteryx [https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/ellie-mason/statistics-series-1-1-cluster-analysis-alteryx/] and Tableau [https://www
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Fri 01 Feb 2019 | Ellie Mason
Tableau Tip: Formatting BANs
BANs, or Big Ass Numbers, are a great way of displaying important figures very quickly. But, often they are not formatted well enough to be effective, or dynamic. They need to really hit the point home. Here I’ll talk through 4 quick tips to really make the most of your BANs
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Fri 01 Feb 2019 | Ellie Mason
Tableau Tip: Splitting the view using Set Actions
Today DS11 learnt about some of the new Set Actions available in the new Tableau 2018.3. As Harry has this topic for his training sessions back in December, he knows them well (see his blog here [https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/harry-cooney/set-actions-practice-tasks/])
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Wed 30 Jan 2019 | Ellie Mason
The infinite usefulness of containers
When I first started using Tableau I found the concept of containers really tricky to get my head, and my mouse around! They seemed confusing and a little unnecessary
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Tue 29 Jan 2019 | Ellie Mason
Successful Data School Client Projects
During our time at the Data School, we have about 8, week-long client projects. We get the brief and data on a Monday and then have to present our findings on the Friday afternoon. After presenting we then have a feedback session with the coaches and hopefully improve in the following weeks
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Fri 18 Jan 2019 | Ellie Mason
Data School Shadow Days
The Data School not only trains us in Tableau and Alteryx, but also give us a chance to develop other skills like presenting, writing and working with clients. In addition to this, in the last month of our DS time ahead of our placements we shadow a member of the ‘Core’ Info Lab team
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Fri 04 Jan 2019 | Ellie Mason
My Experience of the Tableau Desktop QA Exam
Excitingly, I got to start 2019 as a Tableau Desktop Qualified Associate! I prepped for the exam over Christmas and took it on the morning of New Years Eve
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Thu 03 Jan 2019 | Ellie Mason
Tableau Tip // Creating YTD metrics on a KPI Dashboard
Using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in a dashboard are a great way to give a quick indication of how an organisation is doing. This would be actual number of say sales, or number of people donating to a charity, as well as how these metrics change over time
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Mon 31 Dec 2018 | Ellie Mason
2018 Data Reflections
2018 has been a big year for me, data wise, so I thought it was apt to reflect back before moving forward with some goals into 2019. This seemed especially relevant today, given that I’ve just passed the Tableau QA Exam! Like my half way through [https://www.thedataschool.co
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Fri 28 Dec 2018 | Ellie Mason
How to create a Gantt Chart in Tableau
In this post, I’ll take you through how to create a Gantt chart. This is a useful chart that shows the duration of events, e.g. delivery times or hospital wait times. The date field is usually on the column, and then the various dimensions are on the rows
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Sat 22 Dec 2018 | Ellie Mason
DS11 Dashboard Week // Day Five: Boy Bands
The final day of our dashboard week was so fun! We got a cheeky hint from Andy on Thursday evening with a gif featuring the BackStreet Boys. He then announced, via his blog [https://www.thedataschool.co
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Thu 20 Dec 2018 | Ellie Mason
DS11 Dashboard Week // Day Four: Seattle's Cyclists
Day four’s challenge [https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/andy-kriebel/ds11-dashboard-week-day-4/] was back in Tableau – analysing count of cyclists from Seattle’s Open Gov data [http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/programs/bike-program/bike-counters]
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Wed 19 Dec 2018 | Ellie Mason
DS11 Dashboard Week // Day Three: Foreign Gifts in Power BI
This morning marks the mid-week day of our dashboard week and I was feeling just about comfortable with the format: understand the data, clean the data, explore and visualise in Tableau. However, Andy threw a curve ball [https://www.thedataschool.co
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Tue 18 Dec 2018 | Ellie Mason
DS11 Dashboard Week // Day Two: NOPD Body Wearable Cameras
DS11’s dashboard week day two started out well, as the data was relatively clean and could be viewed straight in Tableau. A good deal of my time today was working out what I wanted to say, as well as how
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Mon 17 Dec 2018 | Ellie Mason
DS11 Dashboard Week // Day One: NYC Snowplow
To kick off a wintery dashboard week, the topic of the day was NYC snow-plow (or as we call them, snow-plough) frequency over the last 3 years or so. We were to join this to NYC street level data to explore which streets or boroughs were most often ploughed, as well as the street characteristics
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Tue 04 Dec 2018 | Ellie Mason
Statistics Series // 2. Time Series Analysis and Forecasting
This is the latest post in my Statistics Series. In the series so far I’ve shown how to generate clusters in both Alteryx [https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/ellie-mason/statistics-series-1-1-cluster-analysis-alteryx/] and Tableau [https://www.thedataschool.co
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Sun 02 Dec 2018 | Ellie Mason
Halfway there....
DS10 graduated on Friday….we (DS11) are now half way through our DS training journey …
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Thu 29 Nov 2018 | Ellie Mason
Connecting to Tableau Server's PostgreSQL data: historical tables
This week DS11 have been learning all about Servers – both the Tableau Server and the Alteryx Server, as well as their server repository databases
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Sat 24 Nov 2018 | Ellie Mason
Tableau Tip: Parameter multi-field formatting
When using a parameter in Tableau Desktop or Public, it can be tricky to fix the formatting if a few of the fields within the parameter have different number formats. For example, you may want to use a parameter to allow the user to change between currency, rates and percentage fields in one view
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Thu 22 Nov 2018 | Ellie Mason
Tableau Prep Tip: how to 'Cross Tab'
Today we spent all day performing data prep. It was really fun, leading to some frustrations and interesting language by both us and the coaches, but ultimately was very satisfying compiling lovely, clean data sets
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Tue 20 Nov 2018 | Ellie Mason
Statistics Series // 1.2 Cluster Analysis in Tableau
Cluster analysis can also be performed in Tableau. This post will show you how, using the same beer data as myprevious post [https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/ellie-mason/statistics-series-1-1-cluster-analysis-alteryx/]which introduces cluster analysis and shows how to perform it in Alteryx
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Tue 20 Nov 2018 | Ellie Mason
Statistics Series // 1.1 Cluster Analysis in Alteryx
Statistics used properly can be a powerful tool to analyse data with so I thought I would do a few blog posts, or a series if you will, on various statistical techniques. First up is Cluster Analysis; primarily explaining in this post how to using Alteryx, but also in part two [https://www
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Thu 01 Nov 2018 | Ellie Mason
How to create a control chart in Tableau (including a control parameter)
Standard deviation is used to show how far away data is from the mean. This is used because when data is far from the mean, it can be a random ‘event’ or erroneous data. Therefore, the measure of standard deviation is often used to identify outliers/ spikes in the data for further analysis
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Thu 01 Nov 2018 | Ellie Mason
Data scaffolding in Tableau Prep
Sometimes data analysis is needed for row of data which has no data in. For example, finding out how many people are employed in a certain region on a certain date when all you have is the start and finish date of the employees
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Thu 25 Oct 2018 | Ellie Mason
Order of Operations // Sorting within a filter
Sometimes you’ll need to sort your data but you’ve already filtered on a variable, for example wanting to sort/ show the top N products sold within a category/ categories. To do this a parameter, as well as a filter, is needed – but Tableau’s Order of Operations makes this more complicated
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Mon 22 Oct 2018 | Ellie Mason
A lesson in Design
Stepping away from our laptops for a day. DS11; Week Three started with a really fun and engaging training day with Caroline Beavon [http://carolinebeavon.com/]
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Wed 17 Oct 2018 | Ellie Mason
Splitting Fields in Alteryx
As part of the data prep process, you may need to read in a text file, or split a variable into a few new ones. This is because the text file/ variable contains a string of information, separated by a delimiter (e.g. – , / _ )
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Tue 16 Oct 2018 | Ellie Mason
Splitting Fields in Tableau
Sometimes a few of your data fields will be in one column, stored as text with a delimiter (e.g. – , / _ ). Tableau will read this as one value and to have it as more than that you need to tell Tableau to split the field
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Tue 16 Oct 2018 | Ellie Mason
Tableau chart tips & tricks from Andy's Zen Master talk
[Spoiler alert – don’t read if you’re going to Andy’s talk at TC18!] Yesterday, DS11 learnt about Visual Analytics, so it was quite fitting that Andy gave a talk as a Zen Master on ‘Tableau Tips & Tricks – Charts Edition’
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Mon 15 Oct 2018 | Ellie Mason
DS11: the first week
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Wed 10 Oct 2018 | Ellie Mason
Alteryx Essentials: Multi-Row Formula
The afternoon of Day 2 started with a sort of pre-introduction to Alteryx before the main introduction course of day 3 and 4 of DS11: week 1
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