Hanna Nykowska

Despite enjoying 5 years of studying Biomedical Engineering, Hanna got fed up with the theoretical point of view common in academia. After being introduced to Tableau during workshops with Luke, she decided to dig deeper into data visualisation and data science. It was refreshing to find something that was focused on data but also allowed to be creative. Within the first week, Hanna got hooked on Tableau and Alteryx and was convinced the DS was the right move.

Blog Posts

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Fri 24 May 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
DS13 seating analysis
As we have finished our final presentations, there is one thing that’s left. The seating plan. Throughout the training, we were tracking where everyone sat so that we could analyse it after four months
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Fri 24 May 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Tableau (Server) Tip: Intro to User Filters
Even though we might be finishing the training, it doesn’t mean the learning is finished. Earlier this week we had a Tableau Server Refresher with Ravi. We went over some topics we wanted clarified but also discussed user filters which we hadn’t had much experience with so far
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Thu 23 May 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
The peaks of the Data School
It’s the very last week of training for DS13. I can’t believe it’s already been four months since we started! It was a crazy ride but fun at that, so here are my top moments of being at the Data School so far
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Mon 20 May 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Tiny Tableau Tip: how to use a colour palette with a dummy field
There were a few blog posts on dealing with colours in Tableau, but how can you use the saved colour palettes without picking the screen colour or copying the hex codes? Keep on reading
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Sun 19 May 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Tableau LODs: include and exclude
Continuing on my post on FIXED LODs, I wanted to shed some light on INCLUDE and EXCLUDE Level of Detail expressions. It’s an advanced topic and if you haven’t read my blog introducing LODs, [https://www.thedataschool.co
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Sun 19 May 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
What's it like being a Project Manager: let's get personal
In one of my previous blog posts [https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/hanna-nykowska/16-practical-tips-on-project-management/], I wrote some tips on project management. But I didn’t really share my personal experience
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Tue 14 May 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
How to Start with Alteryx Designer
A few people have asked me how to start their journey with Alteryx and so I decided to write down what I know so it’s easier to pass the information. First of all, there are a few different products that Alteryx [https://www.alteryx.com/platform] offers
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Tue 14 May 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
16 practical tips on project management
Client projects are quite a big part of the Data School training. It’s a week-long engagement during which one member of the cohort is the project manager and the rest is actually working on the client’s requirements. Two weeks ago, it was my turn to be the project lead
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Wed 01 May 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Dashboard Week Day 3/4: Flourishing Baby Names
The Dashboard Week/Day is back! Today we are tasked with building an interactive visualisation on Baby Names in Wales and England using Flourish [https://flourish.studio/]. A few things to keep in mind We started fairly late, it was already past 11 am when we finished our morning training session
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Fri 26 Apr 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Dashboard Week Day 3?
It’s the third day of our Dashboard Week and we were tasked with visualising consumer complaints in America. The data was already prepared by Coach Andy and to make things more interesting, the 14th cohort was tasked with the same thing
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Thu 25 Apr 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Dashboard Week Day 2: Annihilation by Infographic
Day 2 of the Dashboard Week and we’re tasked with creating an infographic on the Avengers [https://www.thedataschool.co
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Wed 24 Apr 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Intro to Tableau LODs (fixed)
LODs (Level Of Detail expressions) are a very special type of calculations in Tableau. They are the ones with the curly brackets. But that’s not the end of the specialness
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Tue 23 Apr 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Dashboard Week Day 1: The Fun Begins
If you don’t know what a dashboard week is, check out Andy’s post [https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/andy-kriebel/nhs-trusts/]. Basically, we get a data set and we’re supposed to prepare the data, make a viz and write a blog before 5pm. > get a data is a bit of an overstatement
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Mon 22 Apr 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Custom shapes in Tableau (hand-drawn and downloaded with Alteryx)
During our web scraping and API week with Andre [https://twitter.com/andre347_] (which was soooo good!), I stumbled across Rick and Morty API [https://rickandmortyapi.com/]
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Fri 19 Apr 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Teaching Tableau
As you may (or may not) know, one of the tasks that data schoolers are exposed to is teaching others. I have done it a few times now in different settings and thought I’d share my observations for the benefit of future cohorts and those who are just interested
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Mon 15 Apr 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Hanna's Makeover Monday 2019w16 - bars bars (bars)
After a bit of a break (I still haven’t finished my 2019w15 Makeover Monday, but don’t worry, I’m getting there), I’m back with my blogs. This week focuses on the words used in the Info we Trust [https://infowetrust.com/inspire/] by RJ Andrews [https://infowetrust.com/inspire/]
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Sun 14 Apr 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Unzipping files in Alteryx
(This blog post assumes you are familiar with download tool and web scraping basics. If there is interest in explaining web scraping, please let me know and I’ll try to write a sensible blog on that as well.) Hi everyone! In my latest post [https://www.thedataschool.co
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Sun 14 Apr 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Scheduling Alteryx workflow that updates data used in Tableau
This is something with a lot of potential. Let’s say you are gathering your own data (eg. via web scraping or APIs) and you want your visualisations to be up-to-date without the need of you running the data workflow manually
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Mon 01 Apr 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Hanna's Makeover Monday 2019w14: 2 metres of cotton buds
This week of #MakeoverMonday [http://www.makeovermonday.co.uk/] is dedicated to the state of the British beaches. More precisely the amount of waste that litters them
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Mon 25 Mar 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Hanna's Makover Monday 2019w13 - What do Millennials spend their money on?
This week’s data is all about spending. More precisely, it’s the spending breakdown by four demographic groups: Millennials, Gen X, Baby Boomers and Traditionalists. See the original visualisation below: Original Visualisation: https://yhoo
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Wed 20 Mar 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Alteryx Certification: Designer Advanced Exam
Hey party people! I’m in a really good mood at the moment because I’ve just passed my Alteryx Designer Advanced Exam! I wasn’t sure I was going to pass so a 95% result was a nice surprise 🙂 Anyway, following on my previous post [https://www.thedataschool.co
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Tue 19 Mar 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Tiny Tableau Tip: How to get rid of the map background
During the #vizforsocialgood hackathon last weekend (I wrote a blog post on what it is, check it out here [https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/hanna-nykowska/attending-vizforsocialgood-hackathon-what-is-it-and-why-is-it-worth-going-to/] ), Rai [https://twitter
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Mon 18 Mar 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
MakeoverMonday 2019w12
I’m currently reading the Makeover Monday book by Eva Murray [https://twitter.com/TriMyData] and Andy [https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/blog/andy-kriebel/]. One of the suggestions was to write a blog post about every challenge and so I decided to do that from now on
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Sun 17 Mar 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Attending VizForSocialGood Hackathon - what is it and why is it worth going to
Hey everyone, last week at our office we had a VizForSocialGood Hackathon run by Sasha [https://twitter.com/alexandrahanna] of The Information Lab. Having taken part in the whole thing, I decided to share my experience and hopefully encourage more people to attend those events
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Sat 09 Mar 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Tableau Tip: Map Drill-Down
Hi everyone! This week we had our first client project, which was a lot. A lot of work but also many learning opportunities. That was one thing in particular that I wanted to share with you. Hence this tutorial
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Wed 06 Mar 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Alteryx Certification: Designer Core Exam
Hi everyone! Those of you familiar with my blog posts on my Alteryx Challenge (which is to finish all Alteryx Weekly Challenges by the end of the DS training, read this [https://www.thedataschool.co
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Tue 05 Mar 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Tableau Tip: Tooltip Viz
I was always impressed whenever someone had an actual chart/view whatever you want to call it in the tooltips. In my opinion, it’s a great way to go into more detail for those interested without cluttering the dashboard. After one of the Friday projects, one of our coaches, Carl [https://www
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Sun 03 Mar 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Alteryx Challenge: Macros
Another week is over and another section of Alteryx weekly challenges is (almost) finished for me. Almost, because I’ve left out a few difficult ones for a time when I’m more competent. The section I’m talking about is Macros. As I mentioned in my post [https://www.thedataschool.co
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Thu 28 Feb 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Tableau Tip: dynamic date level aggregation
For one of the exercises yesterday, we had to create a view that dynamically changed the date level depending on the user’s choice (year, quarter, month). Today, I’m going to show you how to do it
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Tue 26 Feb 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Preppin' Data: Week 2 Recap
For those of you who don’t know what Preppin’ Data is about, it’s an initiative of Coach Carl [https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/blog/carl-allchin/] and my fellow cohortian Jon [https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/blog/jonathan-allenby/] to popularise Tableau Prep in a weekly series of challenges
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Tue 26 Feb 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Alteryx Challenge: Data Cleansing
Hey, Data People! After being behind with my Alteryx Challenge (to finish all Weekly Challenges by the end of my DS training), I’m finally back on track! I managed to catch up over the weekend and I finished another set of challenges
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Fri 22 Feb 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Tableau Tip: Calendar View (Part 4)
As the original Part 3 of my Calendar View series turned out pretty long, I decided to split it. This is then the Part 4, showing you how to build a 12-month calendar. With labels! I continued with my work from Part 3 [https://www.thedataschool.co
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Thu 21 Feb 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Tableau Tip: Calendar View (Part 3)
In my previous posts, Tableau Tip: Calendar View Part 1 [https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/hanna-nykowska/tableau-tip-calendar-view-part-1/] and Part 2 [https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/hanna-nykowska/tableau-tip-calendar-view-part-2/], I explained how to build vertical and horizontal calendar views
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Tue 19 Feb 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Tableau Tip: Calendar View (Part 2)
Continuing with the tutorial on how to build a calendar view (for Part 1 go here [https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/hanna-nykowska/tableau-tip-calendar-view-part-1/]), let’s try to create a horizontal calendar (Andy [https://www.thedataschool.co
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Tue 19 Feb 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Tableau Tip: Calendar View (Part 1)
There were three things that prompted me to write this: Déb’s [https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/blog/debora-contente/] post [https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/debora-contente/calendar-picker-takes-over-boring-dropdown/] on calendar parameter (if you haven’t, go and read it), Andy [https://www
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Sun 17 Feb 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Tableau Tip: copy and paste data from a data source already in Tableau
Following up on Jon’s post on copying and pasting data directly into Tableau [https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/jonathan-allenby/tableau-tip-you-can-paste-data-directly-into-tableau/] , I just wanted to add, that you can do that with the data you already have in Tableau
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Fri 15 Feb 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Alteryx Challenge: Dates
After finishing my week 1 of Alteryx Challenge (see post [https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/hanna-nykowska/week-1-done-15-more-to-go/]), I thought it would be nice to have some sort of structure to it and so I decided to do the challenges by topic
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Fri 15 Feb 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Alteryx Challenge: Intro to Alteryx
Last week, I wrote a short summary [https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/hanna-nykowska/week-1-done-15-more-to-go/] on the Alteryx Challenge idea. The objective is to finish all Alteryx Weekly Challenges [https://community.alteryx
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Sun 10 Feb 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Week 1 done, 15 more to go
You’d think the title is about the training part of Data School. Wrong. This post is about something that resulted from what we’ve learnt this week (Alteryx) and what I’ll refer to as the Alteryx Challenge. Often the first week of a new job or uni is rather relaxed and sometimes even boring
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Sun 10 Feb 2019 | Hanna Nykowska
Overambition, fear of failure and impostor syndrome: welcome to my brain
Seemingly, listening to other people talk about their struggles and how they deal with or even overcome them is actually quite helpful. At least it seems like you’re not alone in having problems
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