It was back to work this Tuesday after a lovely Christmas break (during which I finally passed my Alteryx core exam!). Although it's only been a short week, join me for my weekly reflection of life at the Data School!
Tuesday - Project Kick Off
Tuesday morning was the kick off meeting for our third internal project at the Data School. This week we've been looking at internal data relating to DS placements which has been super interesting as it's so relevant to all of us. After a meeting on the requirements and goals of the project, we started digging into the data, and planning out where we wanted to go with the project.
In the afternoon we spent a bit of time thinking about consulting scenarios, before rounding the day off with a Makeover Monday. I've had a bit of a cold this week so this definitely wasn't my best Makeover Monday attempt, but it's always great practice, and I enjoyed learning a little about Global radiative forcing! You can check out my attempt here:
https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/serena.purslow/viz/MakeoverMonday2023W1/Dashboard2
Wednesday - Spatial Data and Project Time
Wednesday morning saw us looking at configuring Spatial data in Alteryx. We looked at some pretty cool spatial tools in Alteryx, such as the 'Find Nearest' tool which enables you to find the shortest distance between spatial objects in one file, compared to another file. For example, say you had a file with the locations of different burger restaurants, and another file which showed you the locations of different cinemas. You could use this tool to find the closest burger restaurants to different cinemas, helping you plan a nice evening out for example. Not sure why I picked that example, I think I'm craving a burger! We spent the rest of the day on our project, which is coming together pretty nicely!
Thursday - Alteryx Macros
Today was our first look at creating macros in Alteryx. Macros are something that I have heard about a lot, but never really known what they entail, and have always considered them to be very complex. While they can be very complex, they can also be quite simple to create depending on what you want them to do, and based on our first session working with them, I think they are pretty cool. Macros in Alteryx basically let you create a workflow, and bundle it up into a single step so that you can use it again and again, when and where you need it, allowing you to save lots of time and effort. What's more, is that unknown to me, I have already been using macros for a few weeks, in the shape of Alteryx tools such as Data Cleansing. I'm looking forward to getting more confident with Macros!
We spent the rest of Thursday on our internal client project, preparing for presentation day (tomorrow!).
Friday - Presentation Day!
Tomorrow we will have a few more hours to bring our project together, before presenting it in the afternoon. I'm feeling excited about presenting this one as I've created some charts that I'm pretty proud of (with the help of some amazing Core Teamers!).