If I could do it all again, what advice would I give myself before starting DS5? This is a tough one. At first, I came up with a generic list of Dos and Don’ts. As I went through the list I started to notice a recurring theme: Ask questions
- Ask questions in the classroom – Don’t fake it till you make it. If you don’t understand something stop and ask to go over it again. Data School is a safe space and we are all here to learn.
- Ask questions of each other – You can learn a lot from your fellow DS cohorts. Everyone brings their own unique experience to the table. I would want to remind myself to be respectful of one another and listen to everyone else’s presentations no matter how tempting it is to tune out and continue working on my own material.
- Ask questions of the client – Don’t be afraid to ask questions at the client kick-off meeting. I want to understand as much as I possibly can about their needs and their data while I have them in the room.
- Ask questions of your data – You will be asked to visualise data from a different industry every week. I would want to remind myself, to take a step back and sense check numbers in my viz/ outputs from Alteryx workflow. Do they make sense? Are they already aggregated in some way? etc.
- Ask for feedback – I wish I had done this more. Post drafts of your viz on Convo, or share with your Pod. Always ask for wider feedback on how to improve.