Introduction Normally I only write about my own work, but today I saw something that was so innovative that I feel the need to write about it.The work that caught my attention uses observed flu data in a mathematical model to predict the spatial and temporal occurrence of the flu. This work is creative and innovative…
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.
Introduction About three months ago, I used Tableau to build a predictive model for my blog readership. Today I checked the accuracy of that predictive model. This short article shows the results of this fairly simplistic work.
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…
Introduction Writing a technical blog is challenging in many ways. Finding topics to include in your blog is just one of the challenges. This story helps elucidate this challenge from my perspective.
Introduction I have discovered a pdf file that I forgot about and it isn’t something that you can find using a Google search, until now, that is. I have re-discovered Mahdi Hantush’s lecture notes from 1959-1960 on the theory of groundwater motion. I believe I got this file when I was a student at the New…
Introduction This post is to encourage you to watch an amazing movie. The movie took over 4 years to make. It is 1 hour and 41 minutes long and worth every second of your time. Trust me. You will learn a lot. Many thanks to my friend Neil (Neil on Twitter) for sending me this information…
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,…
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.
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.
Introduction I had just hit the enter button to send the email. It was 12:21 am (just past midnight) and within five seconds the phone rang. My wife was lying in bed behind me, my phone was on the bedside table beside her and she says to me: “Who is that?”. Without any doubt of who…
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.
Introduction I previously wrote about solving seemingly impossible problems with Alteryx. While writing the workflows for the challenging problem I described in that article, I discovered a few interesting aspects of how Alteryx handles leading zero fields and performs date conversions. Since these topics took me a bit of testing to understand, I thought that these insights…
Introduction Yesterday was a fun day because I took Jett to get his first official hair style. He just turned three last month and I thought it was time for him to experience Frank’s barbershop. Frank’s barbershop is located in Knoxville, TN and was voted as America’s best barbershop in 2011 and 2012. I’d vote…
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…