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 Arrange Tool allows you to manually transpose and rearrange your data. It can be used to combine multiple fields into a single target field.

A part of the Spatial Tools Category, the Distance Tool calculates how far apart spatial objects are.

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. 

First added to Alteryx Designer in version 10.6, the Optimization Tool is a member of the Prescriptive Tools (included with the Predictive Tools installation) and allows you to solve optimization problems. Mathematical Optimization is the selection of the best possible option(s), given a set of alternatives and a selection criterion. In this Tool Mastery, we will review the inputs, configuration, and outputs of the Optimization Tool.

Introduced in Alteryx Designer 2018.3, the Insight tool can be used to build and combine multiple interactive charts into an interactive dashboard, allowing you to clearly communicate your analysis and data insights. This article will review many of the features of the Insight tool, and how to use them. With this article, I hope you feel empowered to take on your Visualytics adventures head-first.

With the release of 2018.3 comes the long-awaited and highly anticipated Python Tool! This article is a general introduction to using the tool.

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.

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 Block Until Done Tool on our way to mastering the Alteryx Designer:

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 Directory Tool gives you a data-stream input that contains information about the files and folders (file name; file date; last modified, etc.) for the location of your choice, which you can then use for more complex interactions with the file system. Basically, the Directory Tool could also finally help me track down my keys - not just where I put the keys in the house, but also how long they've been there, and when they were last moved.

The Field Info Tool is another one of the gems hidden in the Developer Tool Category – however don’t be intimidated, this is a tool for all of us! The purpose of the Field Info Tool is to give you the information about the fields in your data in a way that you can use down-stream as part of your workflow. There are no settings to configure, so just drop it on your canvas and you’re good to go!

Did you ever play that party-game called 6-degrees of separation where you have to figure out how you are connected to someone famous in less than 6 relationships  (or the movie version – 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon)? Well that game just got a whole lot easier with the Make Group Tool!

For any macro or analytic app – one of the inevitable questions that you may encounter is “how do I configure this to do what I need?” For example, if you build a macro that checks if two fields are equal, but sometimes you want to ignore the case such that “A” equals “a,” and sometimes you want an exact match. This is where the Interface Tool Category comes to the rescue, with a super-tool called Check Box!