Need help with an exercise

[sameersheikh]

Hello All,

I'm not sure how exactly to do this, given it's through the Alteryx Academy at a local community college.  Am I allowed to post the file?  I think that would be the best way to get help because you'll be able to see my workflow.  Otherwise, I'm not sure that I'll be able to do a good job in explaining the issue.

Anyways, here's the question:

Reduce the data set to just the consignments with compensation. Convert the compensation to GBP for the consignments that are currently in USD and provide the following metrics:
a. the total number of compensation claims to be paid, and the total value of those claims
b. the total compensation from each carrier rounded to the nearest GBP
c. the top 3 months in terms of compensation claims to be paid, rounded to the nearest one hundredth, and with the € symbol

First of all, the rounding is killing me.  I have no clue how to round to the appropriate 2-decimal digit number.  Round and the other one Ceil, iirc, don't do this.  They round to an integer.  Next, I am completely clueless when it comes to c.  I have no clue where to begin because the lesson didn't give us the tools or methods on how to do what it's asking - again with the rounding to the nearest hundredth and this appending of the Euro character.

I tried converting the data from fixed decimal to a string, using ToString(), but Alteryx didn't like it.  And honestly, that's about the only tool in my bag of tricks for dealing with the question.

EDIT:

I'm going to include the question and what I've done.  You can see my results along with the solution results - they're quite different.  If this is a violation of the ToS, then I'll take it down.  I feel that this isn't going to make much sense, unless you all can see what I'm working with.

[sameersheikh]

How about a couple of hints mentioned at least what's wrong?  It's likely that I'll repeat something very similar to the mess I created with my workflow, given I really don't know what's wrong with it other than maybe changing from fixed decimal to a double data type.

[Deano478]

Hey @sameersheikh I threw some hints into the WF for you along with fixing Q1 and Q2 hopefully this helps.

[sameersheikh]

Thank you so much for the hints.  Unfortunately, I'm a bit lost.  We haven't been taught the Union tool yet, so I don't really know what's going on there - why you'd use it, what it does, etc.

But allow me to take it piecemeal, starting with the first question.  Why is my result off?  I'm getting 6,132,812.55 whereas the solution is 6,185,908.71.  My claims, like that of the solution are for 40 claims.  Why is there a discrepancy in the sum figures?

Again, I'm pretty new to all of this, not just Alteryx but analytics as well; so, I don't have the experience or background to see something that all of you may find quite obvious.

EDIT:

I found the problem in 4a.  There are existing claims that are already in GPB.  I didn't see those, and I believe those were omitted in the summing.

[Deano478]

One reason is that you doing the conversion calculation on all records when the question says just do this for USD consignments only also at the very beginning you'll want to filter out any records that are 0 as the question again say you only want records with a compensation figure meaning > 0.

The union tool is essentially bringing all the data back together again after you've only done the calculation on the USD records the the formula after the union is just taking the value from the original currency column and putting it to fill the nulls there were the existing GBP records

[sameersheikh]

Okay, I think I got it.  I mean, the solutions match, but I don't have a lot of confidence in what I did.

Thank you everyone for you help.

I'm enclosing my solution, which probably isn't as savvy as your solutions.

[Deano478]

@sameersheikh it just takes some determinations is all and you got there in the end well done

[sameersheikh]

Couldn't have got to that point without the help of the community forcing me to churn those mental gears.  So, a hearty thank you again