My first week in DS26

by Dominic Emm

It’s been a few months since I first started the application process to the Data School but I’ve finally finished my first week and here’s how it went…

Day 1 was full of introductions, so if you’re reading this just about to start your time at the Data School make sure you think of some interesting things you’ve done it will come in handy! We spent the morning with Craig setting up our laptops which was then followed by a presentation where we got a walkthrough of the companies history with Robin. The day was finished off with a talk from two data schoolers who were further into the process and gave us good advice about how to look for support and dealing with imposter syndrome.

Day 2,3 &4 was all about Alteryx. This was mine and many of DS26’s first time using Alteryx which meant there was quite a lot to go through but Katy and Peter, who were guiding us through the process, were amazing at explaining what we were doing at each step and helping us solve any problems we had. My main take away from these few days of training, aside from me having a resting tired face, is that you learn the most when you’re making mistakes and never be afraid of asking any question you have as it’s almost guaranteed that someone is thinking about the same question.

Day 5 was our first project which was to supplement our application Viz’s with new data and create a dashboard on it. We were given 3 hours to find the data, process it and make the new dashboard before presenting it in front of everyone. My application was about the London housing market so I wanted to find data about crime rates in London Boroughs to show how crime affected the price of London properties. I spent a lot of my 3 hours trying to find data that I would be able to use and I ended up having to format and merge three separate files to give me data that spanned the timescale I wanted. Once I had done this I only had a very small amount of time to create a dashboard so I quickly threw something together so I would have something to present. The presentation was daunting to begin with as it was in front of a lot of people and I wasn’t too happy with the rushed nature of my final result but I soldiered on and I was really pleased by the end of it as it was more about the experience of presenting to a large group than what I had made!

All in all although the week was stressful at times and a lot to take in I’m really excited for the rest of the process!

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Dominic Emm

Fri 31 Dec 2021

Thu 30 Dec 2021

Wed 29 Dec 2021

Fri 03 Dec 2021