So today is my third day at the data school and DS 34 have had our first experience using alteryx. Today, we had a 30 minute 'sales pitch' on what the uses and benefits of alteryx are and then spent the rest of the day beginning to learn (and play with) alteryx.
Alteryx, in very basic terms, can be used to tidy up data from various different sources to amalgamate it all together so it can be used for analysis and visualisation.
We were looking at sales data and imputed it into alteryx to begin to learn the capabilities of some of its tools. Some things that we managed to do today included: merging five cvs files into one workflow; edit things such as file and column names; hiding null (empty) fields; filtering out certain groups to show only the data that we are (potentially) interested in and turning a txt file into columns of data that we can use and manipulate.
I have added a screenshot of my workflow so far for no other reason than I think it looks pretty cool:
Today I really feel like I have begun to scratch the tip of the iceberg that is the potential of alteryx while still really appreciating the ways in which it can both streamline and add complexity and depth to data and processes that I will be using in the future.