#Throwback Thursday - Week 10 at The Data School

by Serena Purslow

Our first external client project, and my turn to be project manager... Join me for my weekly reflection of life at the Data School!

Monday - Project Kick-Off

I went into the DS on Monday morning feeling pretty nervous, as this week was our first external client project, and also my first time being a project manager - so I was definitely feeling the pressure.

Our morning started with our client project kick-off, followed by lots of planning, and then getting to work on our plans. Being the person making decisions, and guiding the rest of a team was a huge step up and honestly I don't think I was ready for it. However, the Data School is about learning these things, and what better way to learn than by throwing you in at the deep end?

Tuesday - Stats 101

Tuesday was a welcome break from our project work. We spent the whole day getting into statistics, and predictive modelling. This meant looking at distributions, regressions and z-scores. Fortunately I had covered most of these topics at university, so for me it was less about learning new concepts, and more about learning how to apply concepts I already knew, but within Tableau and Alteryx.

I really enjoyed learning these tools in a different software, although seeing how quick and dynamic Tableau can be when working out standard deviations, versus my previous experience with R, made realize how much time I probably wasted at university...  

Wednesday - Project Time

We had another full day of project time on Wednesday, which was made difficult by sickness in my cohort. Nevertheless, we got to work trying to answer the brief our Client had set us. One thing I've learnt as PM so far, is that bringing in snacks can be an excellent morale booster!

Thursday - SQL

As I've mentioned, I've previously used R and so am somewhat accustomed with coding languages, but have long wanted to learn more. Today we got acquainted with SQL (Structured Query Language), one of the most widely used coding languages globally. Whilst it is quite logical in terms of how you read it, I struggled with writing it. There is a specific order by which you have to structure your queries, which is what makes sense when reading the code. However, having to think about this structure when writing it was difficult for me, as the order by which I would go about solving a problem, and addressing it in outside of SQL is not the same order by which you have to write SQL. Hopefully with lots of practice I'll get used to this and become a SQL pro!

Friday - Presentation day (eek)

Tomorrow is our client presentation! We've still got quite a lot to do in the morning, but I'm hoping we'll get through it all, and smash our presentation. Fingers crossed!