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WillM
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

Welcome Career Changers participants!  We're excited for you to start your journey with Alteryx, and would love to ask you one question before you get started.

 

What are you hoping to ultimately attain by participating in the ADAPT program? Is it to add a new skill to your professional toolkit, to jump start a new career path, or something else entirely?

 

Thinking about this before you start is a great way to keep your focus as you work through the tasks contained in the program. Each of you will have a different goal, but everyone will be working through this together; so share your thoughts in the thread below!

 

**Just a note! You’ll see reference to our “ADAPT” program in thread. The ADAPT program was an initial COVID-response to help upskill those who had recently lost their jobs due to the pandemic. Because of the success of that program, it has evolved into our new Career Changer program – open to anyone looking to upskill themselves with data analytics through Alteryx.

 

 

 

Will Machin
Community Management Team Lead
Alteryx
156 REPLIES 156
farzeenw
6 - Meteoroid

Super excited to be a part of the ADAPT Program! Writing in from Kenya, I hope to find some people who are also residing on the continent and beyond that I can connect with.

 

I've been really interested in trying to "make data work for me". I've taken a couple of courses in Python because I thought that would be a good starting point to learn to analyze data better but in all honesty, I have never learnt code before and I have been finding it difficult. 

 

After being furloughed, I came across the ADAPT program and after researching AlteryX, I thought, "Wow. I've gotta do this!" I'm looking forward to learning how to use the software as well as the skills and techniques to achieve my ultimate goal of "making data work for me".

 

 

DCHOLMAN08
7 - Meteor
Good luck to you! It’s amazing all of us working on the same track all over
the globe. I have studied both Python and R and had some success learning
but I agree it’s difficult. To me I think of Alteryx as HomeDepot, Lowes (
or any large hardware store where you live) all mushed into one. To me
productivity scales so quickly. Good luck with your adventures in Alteryx
and stay healthy!
leslienana
6 - Meteoroid

welcome aboard! Wishing you a happy Alteryxing! lol

farzeenw
6 - Meteoroid

It's definitely a game-changer for me. I like your Home Depot comparison, it seems apt. 

 

I'm hoping I can quickly enough so I can navigate across the different "aisles" but in case I'm lost, I know the Alteryx community is there to help!

 

How long did you study R & Python? I've only done a couple of MOOCs and it wasn't until recently that I understood some of the basic concepts like lists, tuples & dictionaries. I know I have a long way but I am pushing on.

 

I want to learn those skills so I can play around with knowledge of Python and Alteryx and work on some data sets so I can start building a portfolio of work.

 

Any suggestions?

izamryan
8 - Asteroid

Hi @farzeenw 

 

check out my earlier post on this

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Discussions/Join-the-discussion-Share-ADAPT-Program-goals/m-p/57691...

 


@farzeenw wrote:

I want to learn those skills so I can play around with knowledge of Python and Alteryx and work on some data sets so I can start building a portfolio of work.

My suggestion on this is :

 

You've had a great start by signing up to ADAPT with @AlteryxForGood. The work you did on Python before on data structures is sort of a pre-requisite to many data science type interviews (look up "leetcode"). Half the challenge in Python (and also, in Alteryx!) is understanding what data structure suits a particular challenge. For example, how do you pivot transactional data into summarised fields? Once you know what your data structures are, those are your tools for solving higher-level challenges.

 

1. Complete the Core certification, ASAP. If you're like me you'd have completed ~10 of the Weekly challenges before you started the Core exam.

 

2. Get cracking with the Nanodegree! Predictive analytics is the bomb and if you really want to impress with your portfolio, I think this is the route to it: applied data science with real-world data sets.

 

3. Continue completing the Weekly challenges - once you get to the ~30 completed challenges mark you're roughly in the top 10 percentile of Alteryxers (~3,000 of us have got the Level 1 badge of "Basecamp - complete 1 challenge," whilst ~341 of us have the 4th achievement of "Western CWM - complete 30 challenges") as measured by completing the weekly challenges.

 

4. Look up new data sets to add to your portfolio - I suggest looking at Kaggle data sets and within your own organisation/company for data sets. Failing that, try not-profit organisations and asking friends/family if they have any crunchy data sets that you can help them solve.

 

5. Python is a great tool to supplement your Alteryx work - the possibilities are endless when you add the scripting capabilities of Python to Alteryx. Although I might hazard that R and Tidyverse could be a better choice for messy data science. You may find yourself running up against the "explicit is better than implicit" style rule in Python. So start experimenting with solving challenges and Kaggle data sets with Python tools in your Alteryx workflows.

 

Feel free to DM me or tweet me at @izamryan

 

Oh! And here's a video from a Professor Bradley Efron ...

https://youtu.be/6l9V1sINzhE?t=654

 

He says:

I just so envy people who are real naturals at the computer.
And naturals in a sense of being able to work flexibly
with the theory and not get overwhelmed by the details,
which are to me just overwhelming.

 

So! In the words of one of the leading minds in the data science world, who codes R and writes books on statistical inference, I think if he saw how quickly we us ADAPT graduates could get up to Core level and up to predictive analytics, without being overwhelmed by the details, I think he'd be pleased 🙂

farzeenw
6 - Meteoroid

Thank you so much, @izamryan 

 

I really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts. 

I'm definitely working on completing all the lessons and taking the Core Certification Exam.

 

I'm also looking forward to the Udacity course because like you said, I'm sure that will give me an opportunity to learn by doing.

To be honest, I haven't started the Weekly Challenge but your comments have definitely "lit a fire" so I'm going to pay particular attention to them.

 

I'm not on Twitter (I know, very weird) but by any chance can I find you on LinkedIn or Facebook?

srinivasan_c1
5 - Atom

Thanks for the opportunity! Not having coding knowledge always haunted me in developing automation solutions for data analysis. From the first time I saw Alteryx introduction video, I got excited and have started learning eventually during the Covid-19 lock-down times. I am aiming to be a SME as well as motivating as many colleagues as possible in my team by the time lock-down is lifted!

StellaBon
11 - Bolide

Hi, everyone! I am beginning my 5th week of the Adapt program fundamentals course and happy to report, so far so good! I have learned a lot and I have a few of questions, followed by a teary thank you:

 

1) If I pass Core Certification on my first attempt does my 3-month license end?

 

2) I am doing the Fundamentals learning path, but should I also do the Data Science learning path? Do both result in the same Core Certification? Can I do Data Science after Fundamentals Core Cert?

 

3) Can anyone recommend a free resource on Mathematics commonly used in business?

 

4) Can anyone recommend some Challenges using the basic tools in the Fundamentals learning path? I need more practice working with a variety of data and different circumstances.

 

About me:

My last job (which closed due to Covid) was as a retail store operational manager in a company that was not interested in collecting ANY data about it's customers. That was frustrating but I did learn a lot about communicating with customers and coworkers in that position.

 

Fun Fact 1: I once went sky-diving and the pilot briefly let me fly the plane. The flying part was even more fun than the jumping out part.

Fun Fact 2: I once built a database in Access but didn't realize that was what I did and continued to think I was computer illiterate. It has only slowly dawned on me that I am actually very suited to this type of work! 

 

My goal is to take this resource as far as I can, get a stable job by November, 2020, and live happily ever after.  Thanks so much to everyone involved in the ADAPT program and it's support. You didn't have to throw out this lifeline but I'm so very grateful that you did. 

StellaBon

srinivasan_c1
5 - Atom

Hi StellaBon,

 

Looking at the progress you have made I guess you will surely pass the certification very fast! all the very best both for completion of the certification as well as landing in a job successfully. I think I can answer one or two; on point 1. if you pass the certificate I don't think you will lose 90 day trial; in fact, you will get more days (if I am not wrong another 60 days). On point 4. weekly challenges are a great source in y view to practice; most of the discussions that happen in the community are posted by people that work on real-time data issues and questions; they can be great source to practice as well. Once again, continue learning at the same pace and my best wishes for you to land in a job very soon. God Bless! Cheers.

 

Srini

izamryan
8 - Asteroid

Hello @StellaBon , welcome to the program! Glad to hear that you've learned a lot.

 

1. As far as I know, the 3-month licence is ... a 3-month license that isn't tied to the Core Certification. @AlteryxForGood might be able to confirm this.

 

2. Once you're ready to sit the Core Certification, I recommend that you do it. If I'm not wrong, the Data Science learning path includes the machine learning content, and that's not part of the Core certification. There is some overlap between the Data Science learning path and the Advanced Certification. This is the progression that I see in my mind for the certifications:

 

  • Fundamentals (supplementary, doesn't result in a certification)
  • Core
  • Data Science (supplementary, doesn't result in a certification)
  • Advanced
  • Partner Certification (for those of us working for an Alteryx Partner)
  • Expert
  • Master

 

3. I can't give you a recommendation on Mathematics, but I can give you a suggestion on Statistics. Mind you this is a graduate-level difficulty of Statistics, but the R skills you pick up in this could benefit greatly your Alteryx work, as all of the predictive tools are coded in R. As to how to apply these in Alteryx, I can suggest looking for contractor roles which call for Alteryx skill and retail domain knowledge, and then pulling out these statistical learning techniques and applying them in the real world?

 

4. Not 100% sure what you're asking here, but you should check out this list of all of the weekly challenges. It indexes them by difficulty and topic, so e.g. you could "Do all of the Beginner / Data Parsing challenges".

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Weekly-Challenge/Weekly-Challenge-Index-amp-Welcome/td-p/48275

 

Hope that helps!

You can DM me here or reach out to me on Twitter at @izamryan