Today we were assigned to create an informative dashboard using the Squirrel Census data, a log of squirrel sightings in NYC parks from March 1, 2020.
I'll be updating this blog at regular intervals throughout the day with my progress and challenges so far.
![](https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/content/images/2024/03/_fcbb19c3-01ff-4ab6-9940-8d290f9405fc-1.jpg)
10 am
This project is much easier than the past few days! I've spent the past hour exploring the data, starting data prep, and daydreaming about squirrels. I should be done with data prep by 11, leaving me plenty of time to make a fun and polished dashboard.
11 am
Finished data prep! In Alteryx, I did some splitting to rows in situations such as more than one activity listed. Then I moved into Tableau Prep to group values together ("chillin'" and "chilling" for example) to bucket activities and interactions with humans. Now I'll move into Tableau to do some exploration and choose a focus for my dashboard and make an Excalidraw.
12:30 pm
I thought I wanted to focus on squirrel activities but as I was exploring the data, I noticed that squirrels with different fur color were concentrated in different parks. I'm changing my focus to fur color.
2 pm
I'm making progress on the charts--one map with a pie chart marking each park showing the percent of squirrels of each color and one map that switches between parks showing the distributions of squirrels in the chart. I wanted to make a sunburst chart of dominant and highlight fur colors but since the vast majority of squirrel dominant color is grey, this wasn't going to look too good, so I scrapped it. Maybe just a donut/acorn chart showing the colors.
3pm
Working on formatting and writing up analysis.
3:30pm
Not quite how I want it to be, but sufficient to call it "finished."