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Alter.Nation

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MattD
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

Excited Santa.gif

It’s finally that time of year!

 

Solution

 

After four weeks of applied Alteryx might, we can finally tally this one in the win column - Santalytics has officially come to an end! We helped Santa sort and rank the naughty and nice kids from the year in Part 1, determined his delivery hubs to account for every nice kid and their presents in Part 2, and assigned the best possible presents for each kid while accounting for sleigh weight in Part 3 - all that separated Santa from the fruits of our analytical insight was to visualize his trip across the globe so he could make it back in record timing in Part 4, the final chapter of the Santalytics challenge. Making effective visuals requires equal parts creativity and finesse to make raw data jump from the page, and Santa needed all the help he could get breaking it down this year. To that end, we’ve attached our approach to show old Kris Kringle how to make his trip around the world without stopping for directions (v10.6 Santalytics Part 4 Solution.yxzp):

 

Solution.png

 

 We started the process by deciding on a live visual that would show, sequentially, Santa’s trips to and from the North Pole to each respective hub. Realizing this could be captured in a gif where each trip was added to a world map, we set out to create images of each of those frames that could be stacked to create the whole of the visualization when assigned a proper display, or visual, order. Generating those images began with the Poly-Build Tool, to create polylines from the North Pole (arbitrarily selected point of latitude 85.0000 and longitude 0.000) to each hub centroid, and ended with the Report Map Tool, which created the images in a batch macro (attached as v10.6 Santalytics Part 4 Generate Maps.yxmc, seen below).

 

Solution Macro.png

 

Within this batch macro, we configured the Report Map Tool to show the whole of the input at each step in visual order as one map image and utilized the batch macro’s control parameter to add each sequential trip, filtering any following in visual order, to create the .png images we needed:

 

Images.png

 

With the images generated in Alteryx, we only needed to find our favorite gif generator online to stitch them together and add effects!

 

  Santalytics Part 4.gif

 

Kudos to @ggruccio, who also created a report map to list Santa’s stops - starting in New Zealand and working across the world to Samoa, where Santa was later seen relaxing in the island sun celebrating his time saved. If you took a different route that helped expedite the trip, be sure to let us know!

 

Happy Holidays!

 Part 4.jpg

 Just a few of the timeless Alteryx collectibles to be had this season.

 

 

We were thrilled to have all the participation we did in our quest to help Santa get around the globe faster than ever this year. In spite of the nearing Holiday season, and Santa’s increasingly difficult logistical nightmares, we saw a flood of submissions and alternative solutions that had us awed. Thank you for sharing your Holiday season and always great contributions with us! As you know by now, if you solved it all or just a little bit, we’ll be rewarding your efforts with a Community Cold Weather Kit! Happy Holidays!

 

Swag.jpg

Swag.

Matthew DeSimone
Data Engineer

Former Alteryx, Inc. Support Engineer, Community Data Architect, Data Scientist then Data Engineer. Starting from the old data warehousing paradigm in big pharma, Matt found Alteryx on the first day of the rest of his life. Matt has a MS in Biomedical Engineering & Bioinformatics and is passionate about all things integrated data management and analytics. The Alteryx analytics badassery journey continues here! https://community.alteryx.com/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/375130

Former Alteryx, Inc. Support Engineer, Community Data Architect, Data Scientist then Data Engineer. Starting from the old data warehousing paradigm in big pharma, Matt found Alteryx on the first day of the rest of his life. Matt has a MS in Biomedical Engineering & Bioinformatics and is passionate about all things integrated data management and analytics. The Alteryx analytics badassery journey continues here! https://community.alteryx.com/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/375130