Alteryx Academy

After a few good snowstorms here in Colorado, snow aficionados have an important question on their minds: where's the freshest powder on the slopes?  Well, at least that's the question on @ChristineB's mind!  This week, we're using Alteryx to figure out the best place to ski (or snowboard, if you're into that sort of thing) in Colorado.     The National Water and Climate Center manages a network of sensors, SNOTEL, that collect data all about snow.  The SNOTEL sensors collect historical data (condensed into daily data) on variables such as temperature, snow water equivalent values, and precipitation increments.   We'll use the variable Precipitation Increment (in) as our measurement of recent snowfall.  Using the past seven days worth of data, in conjunction with the shapefiles for Colorado's ski resorts, we'll identify the sensor that has recorded the highest amount of precipitation accumulation and the closest ski resort to that sensor.    Download the SNOTEL data from each sensor in Colorado using the following link: https://wcc.sc.egov.usda.gov/reportGenerator/view_csv/customSingleStationReport/daily/303:CO:SNTL%7Cid=%22%22%7Cname/POR_BEGIN,POR_END/WTEQ::value,PREC::value,TMAX::value,TMIN::value,TAVG::value,PRCP::value. Each sensor's data must be downloaded separately. A list of the sensors site number (i.e., 303 in the above link, which is provided in the Input URL for Data from SNOTEL) is provided in the input SNOTEL Sensor Sites. To access the SNOTEL site for each sensor download, see this site: https://wcc.sc.egov.usda.gov/nwcc/tabget?state=CO. That will give you an idea as to how the data is accessed through the SNOTEL platform.   NOTE: Because data is dynamic, the final solution will change depending on when the data is downloaded. This solution is correct as of 1/23/18.     ... View more

We hope you enjoyed last week's challenge . The solution has been posted here. For the second challenge lets look at removing characters and splitting data into columns based on delimiters.   Many products will export textual data with delimiters such as quotes. This is done so that strings can contain delimiters or control characters within them. Having more than one type of delimiter can be hard for ETL programs to interpret.  In the input text file, there are two different delimiters (double quotes, single quotes) and they surround different data types.   Use Alteryx to strip out the delimiters as superfluous and format the data as represented in the output.   You may notice that we have started classifying the exercises into beginner, Intermediate and advanced.  This classification is used by Alteryx internally to sequence exercises as users advance.    Update 11/23/2015: The solution has been uploaded. ... View more

The solution to last week's challenge can be found HERE.    Determine the items of clothing that have the highest average rating. In your analysis, include 1) only items of clothing that have at least 10 positive feedback reviews and 2) the five highest rated clothing items from each class.   The original data and its metadata can be found here.        ... View more

A solution to last week's Challenge has been posted HERE!    This year's (2017-2018) flu season has been reported to be the most severe in the past decade.  In particular, influenza-related hospitalizations are on the rise across a wider range of age groups than normal.  For this week's Challenge, we'll use data from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) concerning California's data on influenza-related hospitalizations.  Create a table that shows the cumulative number of hospitalizations per age group for each flu season.   Looking for additional analyses to do?  How about a week-by-week comparison of hospitalizations?  Or perhaps a forecast of the number of expected hospitalizations for a particular age group?  Or maybe a visual representation of the data is up your alley!     Stay healthy out there!    ... View more

A solution to last week’s challenge can be found here.    Welcome to a special Weekly Challenge where we will send you on a scavenger hunt to find a hidden word!   This week the Alteryx Certification Team has put together a special challenge that will put your Core skills to the test! Using a dataset compiling a portion of the Core Certification passing exam attempts from the past two years, you will solve 7 clues to find the hidden word. And then, with the Bonus Challenge discover the ultimate message from the Certification team.   This dataset represents Community users from all over the world that have passed the Core Certification exam and earned their Core Badge. (Percentages have been randomly generated, they are not actual exam results.) Hint For each clue you answer, make sure to label the column "Answer".   Good luck! ... View more