How to get Alteryx certified on a deadline

Want to get your free Alteryx certification? Recently I got into Alteryx and picked up their Core & Advanced certifications after two weeks of study. Here’s my study plan so you too can become certified and meet the founders!

1. Interactive Lessons webpage

These are excellent at getting to use cases and directing your attention towards the important interface elements. The lessons ones uploaded in late May are the best (e.g. Getting Started, Writing Expressions). The ones uploaded in early August are less polished and seem to jump to the next topic before I finish absorbing the latest knowledge (e.g. Creating Analytic Apps, Parsing Data).

It would be awesome to have additional lessons for creating macros, or administering an Alteryx Gallery. In their absence I used Youtube videos posted by enthusiasts, which were useful but less clear.

2. Tutorials & Sample Workflows in Designer

You can find these by navigating from the Help tab in the top menu bar.

These are great for letting you tweak tool settings and see how the outputs change. Many exam questions use datasets from the samples, so you can easily reconstruct the scenario in Designer and confirm the right answer.

I recommend organising your samples into one big workflow. You can make a Tool Container for the variations of individual tools, and only have one container enabled at a time, to keep things tidy. You can document your thoughts in the tool container titles and the tool annotations, and use Comment tools when the annotations run out of room.

3. Alteryx Designer Help webpage

Skim each tool’s page! They have high-level advice on using a tool which I didn’t find anywhere else (e.g. for the Poly-Match tool, it said polygons should preferrably be in the Target anchor, whereas I assumed polygons go into the Universe anchor).

4. Tool Mastery Index webpage

This is good for when you’re already comfortable using a tool, rather than learning it from scratch. The page lacks automated tracking of what material you’ve seen (unlike the Interactive Lessons), so you may find it easier to read each group in one go (e.g. Join, Parse) rather than tool by tool (e.g. Input Data, Text Input).

5. Weekly Challenge Index webpage

Even if you’re a beginner, you can benefit from these. You’ll see how many people approach the same problem differently, and can get a quick response if you have a question.

Where to next?

One thing that the exams do not test is how readable your workflow is to other people (including yourself, months later!). I’m collecting the best practices around this, and plan to post separately on the topic.

If you found this material useful in your studies, please let me know!

How a visualisation helped me change jobs

You, my dear reader, will probably change jobs every couple of years. I will do so very soon. I held off for a while, almost for 5 years, so I’m out of practice.

Cumulative number of jobs held from ages 18 to 52, by sex and age. Sourced from the US Bureau of Labour Statistics, who are apparently using Excel for visualisations. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/nlsoy.pdf

I have to untangle my goals from those of my team, and my broader company. I am struggling, to be honest. A lot of things that seemed important to me are no longer my responsibility.

In my daily work, I use simple visuals to convey complex ideas. Let me share the visual that made me think hard about whether I’m doing the right things with my life.

One filled square represents one elapsed week of my life. The idea for this visual came from Tim Urban. Scroll further to see the R code I wrote for it.

We’re already a quarter of the way through. I sure don’t feel that I’ve accomplished a quarter of my goals! Initially I felt like rushing out and putting my legacy on track. After a couple weeks passed and I filled in two more squares, I thought differently about my accomplishments.

Blue is childhood, green is adolescence, red is my adulthood to date, and the grey top bit is senility.

 

In the blue parts of my life, I had little agency so I could not accomplish much. In the green parts, my main priorities were books, video games, and television. Those aren’t laudable goals, but they show that I haven’t worked on my current priorities for all that long. In the red parts, I can recognise the person I am today. This is when I met & married my wife, took charge of my finances, contributed to my community, and set the foundations of my career.

Now my accomplishments seem the result of 10 years of focused work, rather than 27 years of meandering. I feel empowered to do more than I’ve done before. I am reminded that the pressures & obligations of my job are transitory, and I’ll bring that mindset with me when I start at the next company. I hope you can gain similar insights and apply them to wherever you are in life.

## This code was created by Peter Horniak on 28/09/2018 18:13 AEST.
# It can be shared or modified under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
# Potential future additions:
# – offer an input of date of birth, so the visual is personalised to each user
# – use a library like ggplot2 to add annotations and ticks to the axes
# – use variables to minimise hardcoded values
# – use a single loop that draws individual squares, and a modulo function to start each new line

## set up the plot region:
xcoord <- c(1, 90)
ycoord <- c(0, 85)

plot(
xcoord, #x axis
ycoord, #y axis
type = “n”,
xlab = “Week of each year —>”,
ylab = “Age in years —>”,
main = “My life in squares”
,xlim <- c(1, 52)
,ylim <- c(0, 85)
)

## put in empty squares
squares_empty <- 1:52 #the amount of squares in a horizontal row
rows_empty <- 0:85 #the amount of horizontal rows
startingrow_empty <- 0 #starting position of y axis

for (val in rows_empty) #each iteration draws a single rectangle
{
rect(
squares_empty-0.25 #x axis start
,startingrow_empty-0.25 #y axis start
,squares_empty+0.25 #x axis end
,startingrow_empty+0.25 #y axis end
,col = NA #fill colour
)

startingrow_empty = startingrow_empty + 1
}

## put in filled squares for completed years
squares_filled <- 1:52 #the amount of squares in a horizontal row
rows_filled <- 1:27 #the amount of horizontal rows
startingrow_filled <- 0 #starting position of y axis

for (val in rows_filled) #each iteration draws a single rectangle
{
rect(
squares_filled-0.25 #x axis start
,startingrow_filled-0.25 #y axis start
,squares_filled+0.25 #x axis end
,startingrow_filled+0.25 #y axis end
,col = “black” #fill colour
)

startingrow_filled = startingrow_filled + 1
}

## put in filled squares for final year
squares_filled <- 1:5 #the amount of squares in a horizontal row
rows_filled <- 1 #we only want to fill part of the final year.
startingrow_filled <- 27 #starting position of y axis

rect(
squares_filled-0.25 #x axis start
,startingrow_filled-0.25 #y axis start
,squares_filled+0.25 #x axis end
,startingrow_filled+0.25 #y axis end
,col = “black” #fill colour
)

##colouring my starting years
rect(
0.75 #x axis start
,-0.25 #y axis start
,52.25 #x axis end
,5.5 #y axis end
,col = “blue” #fill colour
,density = 20
)

##colouring my teenage years
rect(
0.75 #x axis start
,5.5 #y axis start
,52.25 #x axis end
,15.5 #y axis end
,col = “green” #fill colour
,density = 20
)

##colouring my adulthood to date
rect(
0.75 #x axis start
,15.5 #y axis start
,52.25 #x axis end
,26.5 #y axis end
,col = “red” #fill colour
,density = 20
)

rect(
0.75 #x axis start
,26.5 #y axis start
,5.25 #x axis end
,27.5 #y axis end
,col = “red” #fill colour
,density = 20
)

##colouring my senile years
rect(
0.75 #x axis start
,79.5 #y axis start
,52.25 #x axis end
,85.5 #y axis end
,col = “grey” #fill colour
,density = 50
)