Dashboard Week: Day 1 - NBA Stats

by Andy Kriebel

Dashboard week is developing quite the reputation at the Data School. Each cohort has to go through their own version of Hell Week Dashboard Week and it starts today for DS6. The point of Dashboard Week is to get them working very, very quickly through a brand new data set each day. I adjusted for each cohort based on feedback from previous cohorts, which means it gets tougher and tougher. This week, each day will require data prep as well as building a dashboard. Some days have complex data, some don’t. It’s a total surprise each morning.

Friday is by far the toughest day. The day starts and ends with presentations. That means only 4-5 hours to complete an entire project, which will include data prep and the dashboard.

 

THE RULES

  • Each day they are given a new data set from which to create a dashboard.
  • They must work individually on the data prep and dashboard. Alteryx must be used for the data prep and Tableau for the visualisations.
  • Each morning (starting on Tuesday), they will present their work from the day before. Each presentations should be 5-10 minutes max per person. These will be broadcast via GoToMeeting (Link).
  • For the weekly Friday presentations, they will present their Friday dashboard, plus one favorite from the other days.
  • Each day they must also write a short blog post for each dashboard.

Easy, right? Let’s get started.

 

MONDAY CHALLENGE

I love sports. Coach Carl loves the NBA. So Monday’s focus is on visualising NBA data. I’ve come up with eight scenarios I’m interested in. They will be assigned by random draw out of our infamous number picking mug. They will need to call the API that’s available at either NBA Stats or Basketball Reference with Alteryx, prep the data and then build a dashboard in Tableau.

 

SCENARIOS
  1. Jordan vs. Kobe
  2. Team Comparison
  3. Coach’s KPIs
  4. Franchise History
  5. Best Players by Position
  6. Season Schedule with Game by Game Results
  7. The Best Shooters with Shot Heatmaps
  8. Larry Bird vs. Stephen Curry

Join us Tuesday morning at 9am BST for their first presentations.