Tool Mastery

This tool provides a number of different univariate time series plots that are useful in both better understanding the time series data and determining how to proceed in developing a forecasting model.

The TS Filler Tool takes a data stream of time series data and fills in any gaps in the series.

The humble histogram is something many people are first exposed to in grade school. Histograms are a type of bar graph that display the distribution of continuous numerical data. Histograms are sometimes confused with bar charts, which are plots of categorical variables.

The subtitle to this article should be a short novel on configuring the Decision Tree Tool in Alteryx. The initial configuration of the tool is very simple, but it you chose to customize the configuration of the tool at all, it can get complicated quickly. In this article, I am focusing on the configuration of the Tool. However, because it is a Tool Mastery, I am covering everything within the configuration of the tool

Typically the first step of Cluster Analysis in Alteryx Designer, the K-Centroids Diagnostics Tool assists you to in determining an appropriate number of clusters to specify for a clustering solution in the K-Centroids Cluster Analysis Tool, given your data and specified clustering algorithm. Cluster analysis is an unsupervised learning algorithm, which means that there are no provided labels or targets for the algorithm to base its solution on. In some cases, you may know how many groups your data ought to be split into, but when this is not the case, you can use this tool to guide the number of target clusters your data most naturally divides into.

Clustering analysis has a wide variety of use cases, including harnessing spatial data for grouping stores by location, performing customer segmentation or even insurance fraud detection. Clustering analysis groups individual observations in a way that each group (cluster) contains data that are more similar to one another than the data in other groups. Included with the Predictive Tools installation, the K-Centroids Cluster Analysis Tool allows you to perform cluster analysis on a data set with the option of using three different algorithms; K-Means, K-Medians, and Neural Gas. In this Tool Mastery, we will go through the configuration and outputs of the tool.

The Append Cluster Tool is effectively a Score Tool for the K-Centroids Cluster Analysis Tool. It takes the O anchor output (the model object) of the K-Centroids Cluster Analysis Tool, and a data stream (either the same data used to create the clusters, or a different data set with the same fields), and appends a cluster label to each incoming record. This Tool Mastery reviews its use. 

The Neural Network Tool in Alteryx implements functions from the nnet package in R to generate a type of neural networks called multilayer perceptrons. By definition, neural network models generated by this tool are feed-forward (meaning data only flows in one direction through the network) and include a single Hidden Layer. In this Tool Mastery, we will review the configuration of the tool, as well as what is included in the Object and Report outputs.

The Alteryx Forest Tool implements a random forest model using functions in the randomForest R package. Random forest models are an ensemble learning method that leverages the individual predictive power of decision trees into a more robust model by creating a large number of decision trees (i.e., a "forest") and combining all of the individual estimates of the trees into a single model estimate. In this Tool Mastery, we will be reviewing the configuration of the Forest Model Tool, as well as its outputs. 

Linear regression is a statistical approach that seeks to model the relationship between a dependent (target) variable and one or more predictor variables. It is one of the oldest forms of regression and its applications throughout history have been endless for modeling all kinds of phenomena. In linear regression, a line of best fit is calculated using the least squares method. This linear equation is then used to calculate projected values for the target variable given a set of new values for the predictor variables.

The Association Analysis Tool allows you to choose any numerical fields and assesses the level of correlation between those fields. You can either use the Pearson product-moment correlation, Spearmen rank-order correlation, or Hoeffding's D statistics to perform your analysis. You can also have the option of doing an in-depth analysis of your target variable in relation to the other numerical fields. After you’ve run through the tool, you will have two outputs:

The Field Summary Tool analyzes data and creates a summary report containing descriptive statistics of data in selected columns. It’s a great tool to use when you want to make sure your data is structured correctly before using any further analysis, most notably with the suite of models that can be generated with the Predictive Tools.

This article is part of the Tool Mastery Series, a compilation of Knowledge Base contributions to introduce diverse working examples for Designer Tools. Here we’ll delve into uses of the Boosted Model Tool on our way to mastering the Alteryx Designer

A common task that analysts can run into (and a good practice when analyzing data) is to determine if the means of 2 sampled groups are significantly different. When this inquest arises, the Test of Means tool is right for you! To demonstrate how to configure this tool and how to interpret the results, a workflow has been attached. The attached workflow (v. 11.7 ) compares the amount of money that customers spent across different regions in the US. The Dollars_Spent field identifies the amount of money an individual spent and the Region field identifies the region that the individual resides in (NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST).

As most of us can agree, predictive models can be extremely useful. Predictive models can help companies allocate their limited marketing budget on the most profitable group of customers,  help non-profit organizations to find the most willing donors to donate to their cause, or even determine the probability a student will be admitted into a given school. A well-designed predictive model can help us make smart and cost-effective business decisions.

Logistic Regression is different from other types of regression because it creates predictions within a range of 0-1 and it does not assume that the predictor variables have a constant marginal effect on the target variable - making it applicable to many dichotomous problems including: estimating the probability that a student will graduate, the probability that a voter will vote for a specific candidate, or the probability that someone will respond to a marketing campaign.