Jeremy Kneebone

Jeremy Kneebone

Jeremy’s career has focused on trying to make public services more effective for the people who use them. Having worked in a think tank, local government, arts fundraising and the welfare-to-work sector, Jeremy discovered Tableau whilst analysing unemployment programmes. He immediately saw the value of intuitive, self-service analytics for making better business decisions, and and consequently joined the Data School to learn more.

His first role was in analysing business processes within local government, where he saw at first-hand the challenges of making efficiency savings within a large organisation. Looking back, he wishes he had Alteryx to streamline the more complicated processes.

Outside work, Jeremy likes to hike, run, swim, play dodgeball, watch plays, learn languages and write novels.

Blog Posts

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Mon 29 Jan 2018 | Jeremy Kneebone
My Reflective Blog, or 5 Things I Loved About Data School
Life is unpredictable. Six months ago, I was looking for a job that would teach me Tableau
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Wed 13 Dec 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
Dashboard Week Day 3: Lessons Learned
Today’s Dashboard Week task was to analyse blog data. We connected to Google Analytics and joined to a dataset containing details about the authors in question. I learned a few more things today. 1. I didn’t try to build the trickiest bit of functionality until the end of the day
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Tue 12 Dec 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
Dashboard Week Day 2: What Have I Learned?
Today’s task was to visualise YouGov data about characteristics men and women of different nationalities found most attractive in a partner. On top of that, we also had to use story points to tell a tale
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Mon 11 Dec 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
Dashboard Week Day 1: What Did I Learn?
It’s Dashboard Week this week in the Data School. Each day this week I’ll be writing a reflective blog on the lessons I’ve learnt from having to prepare and visualise data at speed. Today was a mixed success, but I’ve learned a few things. 1
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Mon 11 Dec 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
I Want a Career Change: Can the Data School Help?
Many people join the Data School from other professions. As someone who’s moved into the Data School from a different kind of role, I’d strongly recommend the programme to anyone who wants to start working in data analysis. Traditional recruitment methods tend to make career change difficult
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Mon 11 Dec 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
Alteryx: Quickly Remove All Quotation Marks From A Field
I discovered a neat formula today whilst preparing my data for the first day of Dashboard Week. If you want to clean all quotation marks from a field in your data, use the StripQuotes formula in the Formula tool. The tool’s argument is the field you want to remove all quotation marks from
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Thu 07 Dec 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
Alteryx: How to Save Your Tool Configuration
Sometimes you need your workflow to remember the field settings for a particular tool. For example, if you’re building an iterative macro, you want the macro output to have exactly the same configuration as the macro input, so there’s no error when the workflow loops
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Mon 04 Dec 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
How to Organise all Your Alteryx Tools with Keyboard Shortcuts
I’m quite messy when building workflows (actually, I’m quite messy generally, but this post is going to be Alteryx-specific). I need a way of organising my tools quickly and neatly. Fortunately, this is really straightforward
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Mon 04 Dec 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
How to Quickly Open Files and Macros in Alteryx
Here’s a really simple tip when working with Alteryx: keep a Windows Explorer folder open with your input data files, apps and macros. This allows you to drag your data and macros onto the canvas, opening them straight away. Dragging a csv onto the canvas will open up that csv as an Input tool
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Sun 03 Dec 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
How to Use Wikipedia as a Data Source
Recently, I attempted to build an Alteryx workflow that extracted information from Wikipedia tables. I’ll publish my workflow once it’s fully operational, but for now I’ll talk through how to turn Wikipedia tables into a usable format
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Tue 28 Nov 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
Alteryx: Why is My Batch Macro Not Working?
Macros can be tricky to set up correctly: you need to get a number of settings exactly right. Below are some reasons why your batch macro might not be working. 1. You’re not running your Macro from another workflow. 2
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Thu 23 Nov 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
Why Isn’t my Iterative Macro Working?
We’ve been learning Alteryx macros this week in the data school. Other Data School blogs have explained how to build a macro, but I thought I’d give you my checklist of things that you might have done wrong. If your iterative macro doesn’t work, it might be because: 1
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Tue 21 Nov 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
Calculating a Moving Average with Alteryx
To calculate a moving average in Alteryx, follow these steps: 1. Get your data into at least two columns: a date field and the sum of something by date. In this case I have Year and Profit for Dar es Salaam from the Global Superstore data set. 2
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Wed 15 Nov 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
Creating a Word Cloud with Alteryx and Tableau
Picture the scene: you have a list of Once you have the data, there are five stages to creating a word cloud. 1. Split each string into separate words 2. Pivot the data into rows 3. Clean the data 4. Get rid of any words (rows) you don’t want 5
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Thu 09 Nov 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
Tableau: Putting Trend Arrows on Table Calculations
It’s possible to show a year-on-year trend within a table calculation. As an example, I’m going to use Superstore to create a graph showing how different business segments contribute to total sales, and how each segment is doing relative to last year
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Wed 08 Nov 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
Tableau Server: Why Can’t I Give a User Permissions for My Workbook?
Sometimes you’ll want to give a user greater permissions on a Tableau Server workbook than they previously had. Most of the time, you can do this by going to the workbook in the Server, clicking on Permissions, adding a user or group role and changing the roles accordingly
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Tue 07 Nov 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
Tableau: Using the Index Function to Show the Last 3 Months of Collected Data
One problem people often have when reporting company performance is updating their charts. In particular, you generally want a chart to show performance in recent months or years, but you don’t always know exactly when new data will arrive
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Thu 02 Nov 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
Using the Keyboard to Navigate Menus in Tableau
Here’s a really quick tip for using your keyboard to make things a bit faster in Tableau. Keyboard shortcuts tend to work in a really intuitive way: hold the Alt key, then press the first letter of whatever menu you’re trying to open. For example, if you want to look at the file menu, click Alt+F
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Wed 01 Nov 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
How to Build a Compass in Tableau
Recently I made a viz of lunch options for schools. It’s in the form of a compass: the school you select appears in the centre of the compass, and different lunch-making businesses appear at the correct distance and direction from the school. The link is here [https://public.tableau
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Mon 30 Oct 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
Alteryx: Where has my Configuration Window Gone?
The first time you open Alteryx, you’ll find the super-useful Configuration window, which is how you make each tool do exactly what you want it to. At some point you’ll find yourself accidentally clicking the cross in the top right hand corner of the Configuration window
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Wed 25 Oct 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
How to Quickly Open Your Alteryx Data Output in Tableau
When you’ve finished creating a workflow in Alteryx, it can be a pain to run the workflow, open Tableau and find the data source. Fortunately, there’s a quicker way. There are 3 simple steps: 1. Set up your Output tool and extract to a Tableau Data Extract (.tde). 2. Run the workflow. 3
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Fri 20 Oct 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
Working With Time Strings: Part II - Converting to Seconds
One option for working with a time string is to convert it into seconds. This is useful when you haven’t got a date field, or when you need to work out how long something took rather than when it happened. You might use this option when your time measures how long it took to complete a race
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Fri 20 Oct 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
5 Tips to Go Beyond the ‘Show Me’ Button in Tableau
Ok, so you’ve used Tableau for a while. The first time you created a workbook, you found the ‘Show Me’ button in the top right-hand corner, which instantly brought up the chart you wanted. It was brilliant. Maybe you don’t think it’s so brilliant any more
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Thu 19 Oct 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
Tableau Tip: Quickly Removing Unnecessary Borders
Here’s a really simple tip for today: it’s something I can never find when I need it, so you might have the same problem. Below is a bar chart with lots of extra lines on it – I’ve made all the lines and borders bigger so you can see them more easily
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Wed 18 Oct 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
Working With Time Strings: Part I - Converting to DATETIME
I find some time formats really annoying to work with. I had particular trouble recently when using time data in the format , so I thought I’d share how I converted that into a time format that Tableau could work with. Tableau can’t read time on its own
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Tue 17 Oct 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
Using a Parameter to Flip Between Days, Months and Years on Your Worksheet
It’s really easy to create a viz that allows the user to flip between different kinds of dates. This example uses Superstore data, and gives the sum of sales over time. Follow these steps: 1. Drag SUM(Sales) to rows. 2. Create a parameter called ‘Select Date Part’
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Mon 16 Oct 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
How to Quickly Add Labels to your Chart in Tableau
Here’s a really quick tip today: how to add labels to your chart in a single click. Make a chart of sales by category: Click the little T button on the toolbar along the top. It’ll add the number of sales to the label shelf. That’s it!
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Sun 15 Oct 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
Tableau Dashboards: Using Parameters to Flip Between Different Charts
Let me tell you about my favourite Data School Week 2 tip: setting up a dashboard that allows a user to switch between charts. Here’s the example we went through: The parameter called ‘Choose the dimension (map or chart)’ allows you to choose which dimension is used
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Thu 12 Oct 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
How to Easily Download Data From the Internet with Alteryx
Have you ever tried to download some data from the Internet? Occasionally websites make it easy and give you a csv, but much of the time that option’s not available. The website might offer something called an API, but you have no idea what that is or how to use it. Here’s what to do with an API
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Mon 09 Oct 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
5 Reasons to Learn Alteryx
Ok, so you’re impressed by Tableau. It’s shiny. It’s funky. You got a free copy. So far, so good. But you’ve heard about another piece of software – Alteryx. Is that worth getting too? Yes. Here are five reasons why. 1. It’s great at cleaning messy data
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Mon 02 Oct 2017 | Jeremy Kneebone
First day of data school: Makeover Monday
Hi, my name’s Jeremy, and today was my first day in the Data School. I found smart people, a lively atmosphere and an interesting challenge. The Day 1 task was to take part in Makeover Monday. We were given an hour to analyse a dataset, visualise it, and present when time was up
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