My 50 Most Recent Alteryx Articles

I have expanded the list to go beyond the 50 most recent articles!

1. Using Alteryx To Understand Climate Change (8/30/2023) - This is my second appearance on the Alteryx podcast. In this episode, I talk about my decade of work on climate change. It isn't very technical, but I hope people appreciate the insights.
2. Benchmarking An Alteryx Batch Macro (Group By vs. Control Parameters) (5/13/2023) - This article examines the computational performance of Alteryx batch macros. A comparison is made between the Control parameter design vs the Group by design.
3. The Timing of Global Warming Development (11/2/2022) - This article investigates the sensitivity of my global warming simulator to the length of the simulations. I wanted to understand if 10, 20 , 30 or more years of data would be required before stable temperature predictions would be achieved.
4. How To Design A Fun and Exciting Online Analytics Competition (8/18/2022) - This article discusses how I helped build the first-ever Alteryx E-Grand Prix competition. The article includes thoughts on building the competition problems and the behind-the-scenes activities that have to happen to make this type of event successful.
5. Article 400 – Decoding The Global Warming Book (5/12/2022) - This article summarizes eight years of global warming research. It also happens to be my 400th article. There is a lot of information packed into the links.
6. Using My Global Warming Algorithm to Predict Future Temperatures (1/25/2022) - Eight years ago, I had no idea that my work would lead to the topic of this article. Predicting temperatures far into the future is really hard to do. Somehow, I've managed to create a method that seems pretty good at doing that.
7. Global Warming Insights In Small Pieces (Part 3) (12/8/2021) - This is part 3 of a story that documents a recent trip to California.
8. Truthful Global Warming Insights (12/3/2021) - Eight years of data-driven global warming research is wrapped up in this article. You can unpack a half-a-billion data points in this article to explore the ideas for yourself. You can download Tableau dashboards that will teach you a thing or two about linear modeling. Most of all, you will gain a better understanding of what is going on across our beautiful planet if you take the time to study this work.
9. The Value of Alteryx (8/24/2021) - Is Alteryx valuable enough for you? To help you decide, I've written a few thoughts on the topic. Please read the article to learn more.
10. How To Help People Improve Their Careers (7/13/2021) - Have you ever thought about helping people that you will likely never meet? I've been thinking about that for more than a decade. I've also been trying to make it happen by writing articles that share information in hopes of helping people become inspired to help others. This story explains how that all happened.
11. How To ACE The Alteryx Advanced Certification Test (6/19/2021) - If you want to pass the Alteryx Advanced Certification exam, you might consider reading this article. If you are not willing to do some work and take some sound advice, skip this article.
12. The Alteryx Advantages (5/7/2021) - I've been using and testing Alteryx for eight years. I've made tens of thousands of Alteryx runs. I've experienced thousands of hours of compute time. What have I learned? You will need to read the article to find out.
13. A Useful DMA Shapefile For #Tableau and #Alteryx (1/14/2021) - In this article, the technique of polygon generalization is used to reduce the complexity of DMA boundaries. This boundary change makes preparing and displaying DMA-based data much faster in Tableau.
14. The Making of A Home Office (8/14/2020) - It took a month to make a new home office for me. This is the story of how that happened.
15. How To Use Python, Alteryx, and OCR / AI to Extract Data From Images (6/4/2020) - In this article, I use a little bit of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) combined with Artificial Intelligence (AI) to save myself from having to do a few hours of mundane data entry. It's not as hard as you think it is to do something like this if you have the ability to use Python and Alteryx.
16. How To Rapidly Retrieve Data From Large Data Sets Using @Alteryx (5/21/2020) - Alteryx has a secret weapon when working with large data sets. This weapon is called Calgary files. In this article, I show an example of using Calgary files.
17. Why You Should Consider Becoming A Volunteer Software Tester (4/24/2020) - For four decades, I've been a volunteer software tester. Looking back on these experiences has shown me that I learned a lot about software. This knowledge helped me be a better developer. During some recent testing, I realized how important volunteer software testers can be to companies that use them.
18. I Wonder What is Causing This Weird USA April Warming and Cooling Pattern (4/22/2020) - Today is Earth day which reminded me that I wanted to talk about a peculiar temperature change pattern I've detected. I don't have the answer of why it has occurred over a four-day window in April. This pattern is revealing itself over 60 years through millions of temperature readings. Be sure to get to the end of the file to see the baby birdies!
19. How to Make Exponential Growth Predictions Using #Coronavirus Data (3/25/2020) - Sometimes I like doing simple scientific experiments with data that is collected manually. In this article, I show how it is easy to collect data using the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus dashboard. This is a good study for middle school to early high school age kids to replicate.
20. A 12 Month Calendar of Global Warming For the United States (1/9/2020) - I have been conducting focused work for six years that has allowed me to create something interesting. I can now produce global warming calendars that allow me to track how global warming is impacting temperatures in any region of the world. In this article, I show monthly calendars for the United States.
21. How Colton’s Accomplishments Became One of My Proud Moments in 2019 (1/7/2020) - This story spans more than two decades. I have watched our beautiful baby boy grow up to be a fine young man. It is now time for Colton to find his place in the working world. It is my hope that he is able to find a job that will allow him to use his education and creativity to do great things for the company that hires him.
22. Many Tableau Vizzes Used To Make Other Pictures (11/4/2019) - I have always wanted to create photo mosaics. I think they are cool. In this article, I show some examples I made this week with a program called TurboMosaic.
23. Insights On Living With Type 1 Diabetes (11/1/2019) - My friend wrote an important article that I think is setting the stage for some big developments. He is a talented guy and I just want to help him spread his knowledge.
24. How Alteryx Took Me to the Edge of Comprehension and Sanity But Tableau Saved Me (10/2/2019) - Learning to solve complex problems takes time, practice and patience. It also requires great software like Alteryx and Tableau. For the past two months, I've taken a deep dive into a naturally complex system. I feel like a deep diver that needs to come up for a breath of fresh air.
25. Why @Alteryx and @Tableau Are Sticky Products (8/7/2019) - It has taken me a while to understand something important about Alteryx and Tableau. Each of these products are very sticky. By sticky, I mean that I have become dependent upon them to do a lot of different jobs. They both are great products for different reasons, but the combination of them is hard to beat when working with data.
26. #Globalwarming Signals in Germany (7/31/2019) - Germany has been hit harder than a lot of countries by global warming. It has passed the dreaded 2 degree C change in annual temperatures between 1960 and 2017. This article shows how the global warming signals have been detected in Germany.
27. The Daily Digest of Worldwide Global Warming (7/8/2019) - I have been on a mission for five years. This mission continues to fascinate me as Mother Nature is sharing her secrets with me. I have been working to understand global warming so that I can teach people about what is really happening on our planet. This is my story.
28. Living the Analytics Dream Via Global Warming, Mapbox, Tableau, Alteryx, Anya and Allan (6/8/2019) - Each day I get to fulfill my analytics dreams. This occurs because of great software from Alteryx, Tableau, and Mapbox, as well as having very talented friends like Allan Walker and Anya A'Hearn. To learn about my latest global warming insights, read this article.
29. KC Special Episode #3: How Speed Leads To Success In The NFL (4/30/2019) - As part of the NFL Big Data Bowl in late 2018, I created a presentation that discusses how I explored game data to uncover insights on how NFL player speed can lead to NFL success. The results weren't always what I expected them to be!
30. KC Special Episode #1 – Zen and the Art of Acealytics (2/6/2019) - In the first Kenny Cool special edition video, I thank Tableau for choosing me to be a 2019 Zen Master. I explain some behind the scenes attempts I made to work for Tableau. Even though I was never hired, I continued to pursue my Tableau passions ,and now I am a bit of a Tableau historian.
31. KC Episode #4 – How To Use The Data Blends Blog (2/5/2019) - In Kenny Cool Episode #4, I discuss the various methods available for using the Data Blends Blog.
32. KC Episode #2 – The NFL Big Data Bowl (2/1/2019) - In Kenny Cool episode #2, I discuss how much fun I recently had working with real NFL data as part of a competition.
33. The Happiness of an Education (1/8/2019) - Contrary to the "Agony of an Eduction", this article expresses the joy of an education. The joy comes from first learning to use Tableau.
34. How I Am Making Changes to Live Longer (Project Reset – Part 1) (12/3/2018) - I am going to reset my biological age. This article describes what I plan to do. I don't know how how long it will take, so you should subscribe to this blog to follow this story!
35. The Agony of an Education (10/24/2018) - Some stories just pop out of my mind. Other stories take time. This one has been forming for the past three months. It should have a subtitle: Why Using Alteryx and Tableau is a lot more fun than using SQL and R.
36. Using Temperature Anomalies to Visualize Global Warming Via #Alteryx, #Tableau, and #Mapbox (8/1/2018) - Global warming has been visualized using world-wide temperature anomaly data. This work uses a pre-computed data set to understand temperature changes over the past 7 decades.
37. How Much Do I Love To Use Alteryx? (7/27/2018) - I quantified how much I use Alteryx. I enjoyed doing the study, although it hurt my brain.
38. Additional #BigData Strategies in @Alteryx (7/1/2018) - This article focuses on efficiently retrieving specific events from big-data sources. Certain techniques are introduced in Alteryx to allow this to happen, including the use of the Calgary Load and Calgary Join tools.
39. How To Achieve Rapid Analytical Insights Via #Alteryx and #Tableau (4/30/2018) - In this article, I benchmark an Alteryx workflow to show how Alteryx can be a very valuable tool in a large enterprise setting.
40. The Making of Episode 2 of the Alter Everything Podcast (@Alteryx) (4/4/2018) - Making a podcast is not an easy thing to do. Even with mental preparation, saying all that is important is difficult when the microphone is in your face. This article includes some additional thoughts I have on the topics we covered in the Alter Everything Podcast Episode #2.
41. Solving Problems By Blending Data (3/29/2018) - I'm saying goodbye to 3danim8's Blog and replacing it with a new website that will be more comprehensive and dynamic. You will have to read this short article to understand why I am doing this.
42. A Short #Tableau Data Story – #3 (Circa 1996) (3/2/2018) - Determining how to characterize vehicle performance has been a life-long passion of mine, even if I didn't realize it until the second half of my working career. I have multiple examples of long-lasting data collection activities that point me in a certain direction. You must read the story to find out what that is.
43. My Fifty Most Recent #Alteryx Articles (2/24/2018) - This article will always have my 50 most recent Alteryx articles. It uses a Wordpress technique known as shortcodes to produce a list of articles. I have been wanting a capability like this for a long time!
44. Data Science: Why Data Comes Before Science (1/2/2018) - Doing data science work means a lot of different things to different people. Many techniques exist for accomplishing the tasks that are needed to solve data science problems. Getting the data right, however, is important in all projects and Alteryx allows us to accomplish that goal.
45. How to Add Geographies to Lat/Long Data for Better #Tableau Mapping (12/14/2017) - This article shows how it is possible to add larger scale geographical information to your data when all you have are latitudes and longitudes.
46. Lessons Learned From a Decade of Using #Tableau (12/5/2017) - Ten years have passed and my Tableau passion has not subsided. How can this be, I wonder? How can Tableau continue to be such an important and profound part of my working life? To find the answers, I took a few minutes to think about what Tableau means to me and what I have learned over these 10 years. These are my insights and I believe them to be true.
47. The Finer Things in @Alteryx (11/11/2017) - This article contains a document that I am building to hold a series of Alteryx techniques that are useful for advanced problem solving. The techniques span a wide range of topics that originate from the weekly challenges published on the Alteryx community site. Eventually, this document will be better organized and will grow into a more thorough reference guide.
48. Techniques for Efficiently Handling Big Data in @Alteryx and @Tableau (11/7/2017) - When data comes flying at you at nearly the speed of light, you have to have fast processing capabilities for using the data to make effective decisions and predictions. In this article, I present some techniques I use to process large data sets in Alteryx and Tableau to be able to see the truth of what lies within the data.
49. The Magic That Happens When It All Comes Together (9/15/2017) - I can call it many things, but when the right technologies are coupled with seemingly insurmountable challenges, greatness can happen. Over the past couple of months I have been able to achieve some remarkable insights by using Alteryx and Tableau on some really fun project work.
50. Lessons Learned From My Participation in a Hackathon (8/18/2017) - Yesterday, I participated in my first Hackathon. I learned a lot about the event and gleaned some interesting insights into the benefit of participating in this type of activity. I think this article is worth reading if you have any interest in emerging technologies.
51. Lessons Learned From Top Coder Competitions (8/17/2017) - Fear can make you collapse, or fear can be a great motivator. Placing yourself into a position where you feel vulnerable can help you find out whether you can fight through adversity and compete, or whether you will succumb to the pressure of the moment. Today was a day filled with fear and I had to reach deep inside to do a job that I thought couldn't be done.
52. Three Aces Talk About The 2017 @Alteryx Inspire Conference (8/9/2017) - Three Alteryx Aces spent some time together talking about their Inspire 2017 conference experiences. This article has a link to that dicussion.
53. A Useful USA County Shapefile For #Tableau and #Alteryx (8/4/2017) - I constructed a USA county shapefile by blending two files together to create a more useful item for Tableau and Alteryx. You can download the source files and the final product, as well as a Tableau 10.4 file that holds the information.
54. A Useful USA Zip Code Shapefile For #Tableau and #Alteryx (7/31/2017) - I constructed a zip code shapefile by blending two files together to create a more useful item for Tableau and Alteryx. You can download the source files and the final product, as well as a Tableau 10.4 file that holds the information.
55. How To Do Trend Modeling In #Alteryx (7/28/2017) - This is the second of a three part series showing how Tableau, Alteryx and Power BI can be used to perform trend modeling of data. In this article, Alteryx is used to perform the work.
56. How To Do Trend Modeling In #Tableau (7/20/2017) - This is the first of a three part series showing how Tableau, Alteryx and Power BI can be used to perform trend modeling of data. After these three demonstrations are complete, a competition using worldwide data will be completed to see which software platform performs the best on completing this type of work.
57. From @Alteryx Inspire 2017: How Joe Mako is an Analytics Virtuoso (7/14/2017) - Writing articles about really talented people is easy to do. My buddy Joe Mako is seriously talented and I show why this is the case in this article.
58. Buckled Roads and Melting Permafrost in Bethel, Alaska (7/13/2017) - A climate skeptic recently wrote a snide article that sent me into action. This article is a rebuttal to his work and explains why roads can be buckling in Bethel, AK.
59. My Work on Quora (6/30/2017) - It is very easy to get lost in time as you read questions and answers in the site called Quora. Over time, I find myself reading more content on this site because it has a uniqueness that I haven't found anywhere else.
60. How To Use Hadoop With #Tableau and #Alteryx (6/26/2017) - We recently made a discovery that allows us to use Alteryx and Tableau with the IBM BigInsights Hadoop platform. This article describes how that happens.
61. Temperature Changes Over the Past 50 Years: A Visual Tour Country by Country (6/21/2017) - Three years have come down to this article. I now feel that I have a good grasp on the spatial and temporal changes in temperature over the past 50 years. I feel like I have now achieved one of my goals in doing this work.
62. Global Climate Data Set 2 – Monthly and Decade Average Temperatures (6/15/2017) - In this article, I give links to monthly aggregated temperatures, as well as decade aggregated results. These files are much smaller than the daily data files and should be easier for most people to render in Tableau or their favorite graphics package.
63. Global Climate Data Set 1 – Daily Temperatures (6/12/2017) - This is the first article of a series that will give download links to the processed global climate data sets I have developed. This article contains daily temperatures from monitoring stations around the world.
64. My #Alteryx17 Climate Change Presentation (6/7/2017) - June 6, 2017 was a great day for me. I was able to discuss three years of work with a room full of people at the Alteryx 2017 Inspire Conference. It was dream come true.
65. How To Achieve Better Data Comprehension, Part 3 (5/24/2017) - It has taken me eight months to finish this series on achieving data comprehension. This is the third and final installment that explains how I have learned to be a data exploiter. You will need to read the article to find out what that means.
66. How I Use #Alteryx and #Tableau to Comprehend Climate Change (5/18/2017) - I presented this talk on May 4, 2017 in Austin, TX, at the Tableau customer summit. I want to say thanks to Brenda Akers for asking me to do this because it gave me a chance to share my work from the past few years.
67. A Nightmare on Excel Street (4/26/2017) - One night after getting frustrated with helping my son complete some Excel homework, my dreaming brain made me watch a movie called "A Nightmare on Excel Street". You have to read the article to understand what that means.
68. Using #Alteryx and #Tableau to Visualize and Understand Population Density (4/20/2017) - Sometimes real work leads to auxillary work that is needed for another purpose. That was the case in this article in which I took a deep dive into computing and visualizing population densities across the US. The results were fascinating and made a good case to share in this blog.
69. A Descriptive and Predictive Study of North American Air Temperature Changes Using #Alteryx and #Tableau (3/1/2017) - In my continuing series of understanding air temperature changes over time, I go deep to develop predictive models of air temperature changes at over 3200 monitoring stations. Alteryx and Tableau simply were outstanding in allowing me to perform this work in a couple of nights.
70. Tableau vs Power BI – Summary to Date (2/20/2017) - This is a summary article that contains links to the Tableau vs Power BI series I have been working on. I also include some impressions about using the software tools in real-world situations.
71. How I Use #Tableau As A Search Engine (2/6/2017) - The vision formed 2 years ago. Many months of experimentation and testing went into completing the vision. You need to read the article to understand what I mean.
72. Test 5 of Tableau Vs Power BI: Pure Computational Speed (2/2/2017) - This is test 5 of a series that compares Tableau to Power BI. The purpose of this test is to see which program has a faster computational engine.
73. How #Alteryx And #Tableau Can Produce Word Clouds (2/1/2017) - It has taken me nearly 4 years and writing over 300,000 words to create a word cloud. The data processing behind this word cloud is pretty cool, too.
74. How to Draw Simulated Topographic Contours in #Tableau (1/25/2017) - This article presents a couple of techniques for drawing contour lines in Tableau. These are not simply connected polylines, but rather are simulated topographic lines represented by a series of points extracted from the mathematical surfaces used to represent topography.
75. Visualizing Warming and Cooling Patterns in North America, Compliments of #Alteryx and #Tableau (1/24/2017) - I take a detailed look at maximum air temperature changes over North America. I wanted to see what has happened over my lifetime, or over the past 5 decades. The results are very interesting, at least to me.
76. Visualizing Observed Worldwide Air Temperature Changes (1/18/2017) - The more I work with this data set, the more I want to know about how our climate is changing. There are so many questions I have and in this article, I have been able to answer a few of them.
77. Uncovering Surprising Global Temperature Changes Via #Alteryx and #Tableau (1/4/2017) - I had an idea about global climate changes that I wanted to investigate. When the analysis was finished, the results surprised me and have helped me begin to understand the air temperature changes that are occurring around the world.
78. Using #Alteryx and #Tableau to Investigate Global Climate Change (12/31/2016) - I am on a quest to learn about global climate changes. I am using the power of Alteryx and Tableau to analyze various types of climactic data from around the world.
79. #Alteryx + #Tableau = Creativity and Passion (12/8/2016) - This article is part 5 of the 3danim8 Blogging Experimental analysis, although I didn't intend it to be. It just happened. A good life can be made a great life if you understand the role of creativity in your life. In this article, I have come full-circle in understanding something that has eluded me for my whole lifetime. This something is called Big Magic.
80. How to Convert Shapefiles to #Tableau Polygons (11/7/2016) - This article gives some technical approaches to converting shapefiles to polygons that can be drawn in Tableau. Two methods are reviewed.
81. DATA is to Life, as Math is to Science (11/1/2016) - I can't even begin to express how deep this article is. It spans decades and it exploded from deep within my brain one day. My life and a long-term study of life is featured in this article. The story is big, deep and more bloated than I wanted it to be, but sometimes that just happens. I tried but I was not able to cut it down to size without losing meaning. I think if you read it, it will be a thoughtful experience.
82. Test 2 of Tableau Vs Power BI: Visualizing Surface Water Flow (10/25/2016) - This is test #2 of Tableau vs Power BI using real-world data. The goal in this test was to see how each package could visualize flowing water as it moves across the 3D topographic surface of the Livingstone District.
83. Medical Knowledge and Very Powerful Analytics (10/15/2016) - It was the best time of my professional career. The potential good that could come from this work is monumental. Unfortunately, I don't do this type of work anymore. Such is life.
84. Test 1 of Tableau Vs Power BI: Topographic Mapping (10/11/2016) - This is test #1 of Tableau vs Power BI using real-world data. The goal in this test was to see how each package could visualize high-resolution topographic data.
85. Impressions From Our First Month Of Using #PowerBI (10/6/2016) - After a bit of cooperation between friends, I decided to continue the Power BI analysis. We want to document how Power BI stacks-up against the Alteryx + Tableau combination that is so successful at producing great data comprehension and visualizations. This series should be interesting over the next few months as we try to document what it is like to learn Power BI when you are a Power Alteryx and Tableau users.
86. How Microsoft Could Put Real Power Into Power BI (9/29/2016) - I have a dream that could be brought to fruition by Microsoft. If you want to know what it is, read the article.
87. Investigating India With Tableau 10 Custom Regions (9/21/2016) - Working on charitable endeavors has its advantages. Sometimes you get to work with data that is so unexpectedly beautiful that it takes your breath away. This happened to me the other day, so I thought I'd share a new Tableau 10 feature called custom regions to show how powerful this feature can be.
88. How To Achieve Better Data Comprehension, Part 1 (9/20/2016) - Some articles form quickly, some take a long time to gel. Twenty, thirty, forty drafts of this one have not been enough. I don't know how I can possibly explain to people who might be interested in learning how to become better workers with data, but I have tried to do it with this writing. I have tried to explain what has taken me 30 years to realize. This work is borderline philosophical but it is based in experience and backed by my observations on what works and what does not work when it comes to achieving better data comprehension.
89. Impressions From My First Day Of Using #PowerBI (9/8/2016) - Life is a funny thing. One day you are up, the next day you are down. The only question remaining is this: Will Power BI be able to recover from today's disaster enough to change my opinion of its value?
90. Who Is More Important To Your Blog: A Hare or A Tortoise? (8/31/2016) - This is part 3 of 3danim8's blogging experimental analysis. This article investigates how important speed-burner articles are compared to slow-burners. I can create speed burner articles by writing about Rich Roll, shown above. In contrast to his ultra-endurance performance, these articles fade quickly.
91. How To Effectively Use Tableau 10 Highlighting In Big Data Sets (8/22/2016) - Tableau 10 highlighting can be very useful for big data sets. In this example, I show how highlighting quickly reveals differences in consumer behavior by state. Some of the behavioral difference are caused by the geographical settings the consumers live within.
92. Proof of Why Alteryx Is Great Software (8/17/2016) - This is 3danim8 article #200. It took 2 years for me to write the previous 100 articles on the usage of Alteryx plus Tableau. The next 100 articles will go into a deeper exploration of the power of these two tremendous tools to achieve great things.
93. How to Use and Better Understand Alteryx Batch Macros (8/9/2016) - This article was written in one day in March, 2015, and then forgotten for 1.5 years. Today I revived and revised the manuscript to get this thing out into the blogosphere. One day, I predict, someone will thank me for writing this one.
94. Text Analytics Improved With Tableau Clustering (8/4/2016) - In Part 2 of my blogging experimental analysis, I use Alteryx coupled with Tableau 10 clustering to perform some text analytics. This work answers a single question related to how certain words can improve blog readership rates.
95. I Try to Inspire Because I Have Been Inspired By Alteryx (7/21/2016) - I have had two unexpected infatuations in the past decade. Not with women, but with software companies?!? How crazy is that? As I continue my blogging mission to help myself and others, I was rewarded today in a way I never expected. This article explains what I mean.
96. Alteryx Strategies For Solving Tough Problems (7/1/2016) - This article describes some concepts and methods I use when building more advanced workflows. In some ways, writing workflows is analogous to writing computer programs. You have think critically about what you want to accomplish. By breaking the problem down into small pieces and solving those, complex workflows become more manageable.
97. Using Tableau to Animate Great Circle Flight Paths (5/26/2016) - I built upon an approach published by James Dunkerley to animate flight paths using a great circle approach. I'm going to use this method to introduce nice visualizations at my workplace.
98. Benchmarking the Alteryx Fuzzy Matching Tool (5/24/2016) - I'm a guy that likes to know how things work. By its very nature, interpreting results from a fuzzy matching algorithm can be a bit fuzzy. The reduce the fuzziness, I got down and dirty and did a couple of sensitivity analyses on the fuzzy matching tool to gain a better understanding of how it works.
99. Why Data Science Is One Reason I Love My Life (5/5/2016) - This is a short story of why I love data science. This story was written deep in my brain during one night of restless sleep.
100. The 3danim8 BEAP1 – Visualizing Geographical Blog Expansion (4/28/2016) - Title Definition 3danim8 BEAP1 = 3danim8 Blogging Experiment Analysis Part 1 – Visualizing Geographical Blog Expansion
101. How To Videos For Tableau Training (4/27/2016) - These are Tableau technique and application videos that supplement my Tableau training course.
102. My General Motors Story (4/7/2016) - In this article, I give answers to three questions I was recently asked on a General Motors podcast. The questions were: (1) What brought you here? (2) What keeps me here? and (3) How does my job move GM forward?.
103. Tableaupedia, Part 1 (1/14/2016) - Tableaupedia is a tool that I have built to save me time. Since I teach people to use Tableau, I have to have quick access to information and this tool allows me to find what I need very fast.
104. Epilogue (12/9/2015) - This article explains why I feel like my Blogging Experiment was a failure. You have to read the article to understand what I mean.
105. The Conclusion of My #Tableau Blogging Experiment (11/11/2015) - By writing this blog, I was simply pursuing my passions. I allowed the blog to meander across topics because my passion is widespread. I wrote about techniques in math, science, Tableau and Alteryx. I solved problems and I shared stories. I met many new friends. I got better in the field of analytics because I connected to a wide group of really talented people. I loved that experience and as I now know, I was driven to learn. It was fantastic journey that included 1/8 of a million blog hits and one that I will always be glad that I took.
106. An Interesting Result from My #Tableau and #Alteryx Blogging Experiment (10/14/2015) - Sometimes I have an idea that I want to investigate. I think I know what the answer will be, but every once in a while the result blows me away. This is one of those cases. Tableau makes it really easy to find the answer to these kinds of questions.
107. My Top 10 Favorite Things About #Alteryx (10/13/2015) - Nothing in my life has allowed me to solve problems the way that Alteryx has. If you want complete and total control of your data, your work processes, and an unmatched ability to create stunning visualizations, then learn how to couple Alteryx with Tableau and unleash your complete creativity.
108. The Secret of Joe Mako (10/10/2015) - Where do we derive inspiration and passion to help others? I think I now have a clearer picture in my mind of what makes Joe Mako do what he does. In this article, I will tell you a story to help you understand what I mean.
109. How #Alteryx Allowed Me To Fix Problems in A Customer-Created Database (10/9/2015) - One day someone gave me a database created by normal people. It took only a few seconds in Tableau for me to realize that I had a serious problem on my hands.
110. How I Use #Alteryx To Simplify My #Tableau Applications (9/23/2015) - Eight years of daily Tableau usage. Check. One and a half years of Alteryx usage. Check. Learning how to make my Tableau life easier by using Alteryx. Ongoing. Here is one example of a Top N and Others technique I moved from Tableau to Alteryx.
111. One Year Later – New Predictive Analytics for My #Tableau and #Alteryx Blog (9/9/2015) - My blog has been a science experiment in the making for about 2.5 years. I've been collecting data to analyze the experiment. Recently my life changed and the experiment changed. Read why that happened and what I had to do about it.
112. Using #Tableau Ver 9.1 to Display 3D Data (7/30/2015) - Introduction I worked over 20 years as a numerical modeler and scientific computer programmer. I routinely hammered all kinds of computers from PC’s to massively parallel supercomputers. I miss doing that type of work.
113. Processing Global Travel Data Part 2 – The Story Behind the Story (7/27/2015) - Introduction I have determined that I will not become a video blogger (I feel like a big dork on camera!). However, I awoke today with a thought that must be completed. I feel compelled to continue this story by doing what the great Paul Harvey used to do. He would say something to the effect…
114. Processing Global Travel Data With #Alteryx and #Tableau – A Video Blog (7/25/2015) - Introduction Chas and Ken (Figure 1) learned about Alteryx and Tableau on Saturday. We decided to create a video blog of the experience. This article includes a series of videos that take you along the journey of discovery. We decided to process global travel data to show how a complex situation can be turned into…
115. This Is My Gift To All #FantasyFootball Players (7/24/2015) - Introduction According to ESPN, it is now time to sign up for Fantasy Football (Figure 1).
116. Please Take a Look at a Couple of My Favorite New #Alteryx and/or #Tableau Blogs (7/22/2015) - Introduction There are a couple of relatively new blogs that focus on Alteryx and Tableau. I really like both of these. The insights I gain from them are meaningful. They are well-done and authors do a great job of explaining their topics.
117. Using the #Alteryx Fuzzy Logic Tool To Find Matching Names (7/7/2015) - When you review these results, the brilliance of the fuzzy matching algorithms begins to be seen. You can see that spaces in the names are accounted for, Jr/Sr's are accounted for, and even the swapping of the first and last names are accounted for. To me, this is a superb result and gives me great confidence is using the fuzzy matching results.
118. Four Months of Living Outside of My Comfort Zone (Part 3) (6/29/2015) - Introduction To understand this article better, you might consider clicking here to read part one of this article.  After that, you can read part two by clicking here.  
119. Rounding to the Nearest Dollar Using #Alteryx (6/24/2015) - Introduction What I describe in this article is a small piece of a fairly big and complicated Alteryx workflow that involves a lot of operations. I wish I could explain the whole sequence of events, but for now, I have to settle on this small technical detail related to rounding currencies to the nearest dollar.…
120. My Thoughts On Being Selected As An #Alteryx ACE (5/26/2015) - Introduction Last week, I drove over 4,000 miles to spend a couple of days in Boston, MA. It was a delightful journey for many reasons. This article will explain what I did and why I took this cross-country journey. I will also explain what it means to me to be selected as an Alteryx ACE.
121. The Brilliance of #Alteryx In-Database Processing (5/13/2015) - Having a super fast data processing engine doesn’t help if you have to pull a terabyte of data from a data warehouse only to find a subset of it and produce a report.
122. Using Bookmarks to Visualize My #Tableau and #Alteryx Blog (4/26/2015) - Blogs are basically terrible at showing their content. Articles get buried over time and forgotten by everyone...
123. Quick Links To 3danim8’s Blog (3/14/2015) - Since I use my blog about every day to find techniques I previously used, I wanted a quick way to launch my posts and to quickly show people where to find information.
124. 3danim8 Blog Links – A Summary of the Past 8 Months (2/11/2015) - Introduction I recently realized that I created a lot of Tableau and Alteryx content over the past 8 months. Sometimes I need to reference the material and it can be hard for me to find. I figure that if it is hard for me to find, others will have no chance of finding it.
125. Today I Blasted Myself Out of the Comfort Zone (2/5/2015) - Introduction Today is the day that I officially blasted myself out of the comfort zone. It happened on February 5, 2015. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but I had to make it.
126. How To Build An #Alteryx Workflow to Visualize Data in #Tableau, Part 5 (2/5/2015) - Introduction This is part 5 of a blog post series on combining Alteryx and Tableau to perform a real-world example of an ETL-based analytics project. If you want to read previous parts to this series, click on these links: part 1, part 2, part 3, or part 4.  In this article, I use Tableau to…
127. How to Compute A Rank In #Alteryx (2/3/2015) - Introduction I commonly have to rank data sets for a variety of reasons. Today I had to create a rank in Alteryx, which is something I have not had to do before.
128. Benchmarking Data Reshaping in #Alteryx (2/2/2015) - Introduction I have written a few articles about the necessity of data reshaping when you do a lot of work in Tableau. To read my most comprehensive article, click here. In that article, I show several examples of data reshaping, with the examples increasing in complexity throughout the article.
129. How To Build An #Alteryx Workflow to Visualize Data in #Tableau, Part 4 (2/2/2015) - Introduction This is part 4 of a blog post series on combining Alteryx and Tableau to perform a real-world example of an ETL-based analytics project. If you want to read the previous parts of this series, click the blue links for Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3. In a recent headline it was reported that, 2014 was the hottest…
130. Hard Jobs Made Easy Using #Alteryx (1/28/2015) - Introduction For four months (October 2013 to January 2014) I did a job that was tough. It was tedious, time consuming, and it caused Tableau to buckle under the pressure of multiple data sources, multiple data joins, and difficulties with data formats.
131. How To Build An #Alteryx Workflow to Visualize Data in #Tableau, Part 3 (1/27/2015) - Introduction This is part 3 of a blog post series on combining Alteryx and Tableau to perform a real-world example of an ETL-based analytics project. You can click on the blue links if you want to read part 1 or part 2.
132. How To Build An #Alteryx Workflow to Visualize Data in #Tableau, Part 2 (1/23/2015) - Introduction This is part 2 of a blog post series on combining Alteryx and Tableau to perform a real-world example of an ETL-based analytics project. If you want to read part 1, click here. In this article, you will obtain and extract the data used in this project. This example uses free climate data available from…
133. How To Build An #Alteryx Workflow to Visualize Data in #Tableau, Part 1 (1/15/2015) - Introduction This is one of the those blog posts that is more of a novel than a short-story and it is more of a marathon than a sprint. In this series of articles, I build a detailed case study that uses the combined power of Alteryx and Tableau to investigate worldwide climate data.
134. How I Evaluate My #Tableau Blog Effectiveness (1/9/2015) - Introduction In this article, I evaluate the effectiveness of my Tableau blog. To do this, I use Tableau fueled with data that was extracted from the WordPress content management system. I did this self-evaluation to understand how I can become a better blogger and to quantify what kind of readership response a good Tableau article will receive…
135. Helping You Find Value in #Tableau Blogs (1/5/2015) - Introduction I have been writing a lot of Tableau articles that are gathered together in a place called 3danim8’s Blog. I do this to help people learn how to solve data-science type problems. These problems arise in business, math and science and I use great software tools like Tableau and Alteryx to find the solutions. I…
136. Using #Alteryx To Process Non-Ideal Flat-Files (12/12/2014) - Introduction Flat-files have been used around the world of the past few decades to store a lot of data. Flat-files were originally designed to save space, although they do have an intrinsic inefficiency because spaces are used as placeholders instead of using a delimiter, like a comma.
137. Working Notes For Drawing Polygons Using #Alteryx and #Tableau (12/12/2014) - Introduction This post is NOT really intended to be a super-clean and comprehensive, step-by-step instruction set for how to draw Alteryx-generated polygons in Tableau. However, if you are willing to do a little work, you will be able to reproduce the results in this article.
138. Using #Alteryx to Install #Tableau Buckets In Your Data Set (12/9/2014) - Introduction One of the most popular topics I have written about in this blog is a method I call “Tableau buckets”. I have been very surprised by the number of people that have found this concept to be useful. For this reason, I am going to extend this “bucket” concept to Alteryx workflows.
139. Methods for Sorting Big Data (12/4/2014) - Introduction Sorting data is fundamental technique and is a skill that anyone that frequently works with data needs to possess. I have sorted a lot of data through the years, for many different reasons. Sometimes the only way to get a job done when working with a wide variety of data sources that might include periodic data…
140. 3danim’s Blog is About Solving Problems (11/18/2014) - Introduction This is blog post number 101, and I now have a clarity about 3danim8’s blog that I did not have before I started writing it a year and a half ago. It took me writing the previous 100 blog posts to gain this clear vision and to develop my mission statement. It only took me 536 days,…
141. How and Why #Alteryx and #Tableau Allow Me to Innovate – Part 2 (11/17/2014) - Introduction I have been thinking a lot about how Alteryx and Tableau work together to help me innovate when solving business and science problems. In this article, I’m going to explain what I mean by the term innovation and how I use Alteryx and Tableau to achieve this term.
142. How and Why #Alteryx and #Tableau Allow Me to Innovate – Part 1 (11/10/2014) - A New Vision This was a difficult article for me to write for a lot of reasons, but I am glad that I wrote it. In this two-part article, which will be my 99th and my 100th blog posts, I revisit my past and present a revised vision for my future as a technical blogger. 
143. How to Work With Flat-File Dates in #Alteryx (10/29/2014) - This article includes a lot of tips for working with dates in Alteryx. The dates can be read from flat files but I also include some tips for reading dates from *.csv files.
144. Solving the Impossible Tasks with #Alteryx (and #Tableau) (10/16/2014) - Introduction I started using Alteryx in May, 2014, or less than six months ago.  I have written a few blog posts for beginners and a recent post about a very impressive result I achieved using Alteryx. Now all of a sudden, the light has shined for me. I get it and I see the brilliance…
145. A Truly Unbelievable #Alteryx Flat-File Reading Result (10/3/2014) - Introduction I previously wrote a blog post about strategies for reading flat-files (fixed-format, un-delimited ASCII files) to get the flat-file data ready for Tableau analysis. That post was written before I became an Alteryx user. 
146. My Lessons Learned as a #Tableau Blogger, Part 1 (9/14/2014) - Introduction I started using Tableau with Version 3.6 way back in February, 2008. Since that time, I have continued to use Tableau about every day, with several thousand data files investigated over this time from a wide range of businesses.
147. Using #Tableau to Supercharge My Alteryx Experience, Part 4 (8/26/2014) - Introduction In Part 4 of this new Alteryx-user series, I utilize the Alteryx/Tableau techniques shown in Parts 1 – 3 in a comprehensive example using data from the National Football League (NFL). I chose the NFL because the regular season begins in about a week and Americans love this sport (myself, included). Once I crunched the…
148. Using #Tableau to Supercharge My Alteryx Experience, Part 3 (8/18/2014) - Introduction In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, I showed how I use Tableau to help me understand Experian and Dunn and Bradstreet (D&B) data that can be strategically accessed via Alteryx. This extracted data can then be used in quantitative business studies or for personal usage. This post provides an example of personal usage…
149. Using #Tableau to Supercharge My Alteryx Experience, Part 2 (7/21/2014) -   Introduction This is the second of a six part series of using Tableau to help with Alteryx applications, especially for new Alteryx users. In this post, I discuss the usage of the business database that is maintained by Dunn and Bradstreet and is accessible via Alteryx. This database allows Alteryx users to access information on…
150. Using #Tableau to Supercharge My Alteryx Experience, Part 1 (7/17/2014) - Introduction If you are an experienced Alteryx user that has the privilege to use the “complete package of Alteryx”, which includes mapping, demographic and business data, you may already have techniques to handle the issues that I discuss in this blog post series.  This series will be focused on using Tableau to help with Alteryx usage, especially…