Advent of Code 2024 Day 1 (BaseA Style)

[MeganBowers]

Discussion thread for day 1 of the Advent of Code - https://adventofcode.com/2024/day/1

[mmontgomery]

D1

Spoiler

It a straight forward problem so I solved it on the raw data instead of the sample

[kelsey_kincaid]

Nice warmup today! 

Spoiler

Wishing I'd used the new Rank tool from 24.2! 

[geoff_zath]

Spoiler

 

[clmc9601]

Yay for a gentle start to the AoC season! I'm so excited that AoC is finally here!!🤩

Spoiler

This is the ONLY use case in which I accept "Join by Record Position" as a valid configuration of the Join tool. Even here, it's shorthand. A more robust method, in my opinion, is to assign record IDs and use that as the join key.

[matthewblandford]

Nice little warmup to start the month! Small enough to just load the raw data into the workflow itself.

[CoG]

Simple yet great start to AoC 2024! This was a great warm up for what I know is to come.

Data Prep:

Spoiler

Both parts of the problem for Day 1 required the data be split into 2 independent columns. This is done quite easily with Text to Columns, Formula, and Select Tools:

Part 1:

Spoiler

Once the data is prepped, part 1 is almost trivial. Sort both sets of data, then Join together again, Ensure that proper data types for both fields, Compare with Formula Tool, and aggregate with the Summarize for the final answer!

Part 2:

Spoiler

For Part 2, we only need the count for each value in the second column, so we will immediately aggregate. Now, when the Join is performed (by record position for brevity), we will have the count of all values in the second column for every record in the first column (precisely what the problem calls for). The Formula Tool will again calculate our Similarity metric, and the Summarize Tool will provide us our answer!

Happy Solving to all others participating. I'm super excited for the rest of the days, so bring it on!

[gawa]

AoC 2024 has just started!

Spoiler

Part1: To align two columns based on their position, 'Join by Record Position' is straightforward way, instead of putting Record ID for each and join by Record ID field.
Part2: As Left and Right columns has 'Many-to-Many' relationships, by joining these columns, number of rows will increase based on its cardinality. Just summing up number of Left columns will match the answer(no need of multiplying values).

[JoshuaB]

Seeing a lot of the same solution ideas! Well done. Such a great Alteryx type of puzzle! 

Spoiler

[Carolyn]

After being peer pressured to solve Alteryx on a Saturday night, I have Day 1 complete. I'm glad this wasn't horrible!

Spoiler