Voice of the DBA

Tag: syndicated

  • Data Analysis Techniques

    This is part of a series on my preparation for the DP-900 exam. This is the Microsoft Azure Data Fundamentals, part of a number of certification paths. You can read various posts I’ve created as part of this learning experience.

    I didn’t think much of this bullet on the DP-900 skills document: describe analytics techniques.

    Learn these concepts. They are definitely part of the knowledge needed. This is a part of some MS Learn courses, like this one.

    Descriptive Analytics

    Descriptive analytics have to do with describing what the data shows. In a report or visualization, we are reporting data to the user. An example of this is showing the top 10 products according to sales.

    These are explanatory analytics and think about that in the test. Are we explaining something.

    Diagnostic Analytics

    A diagnosis is an explanation of why something happened. Diagnostic analytics help explain the reason that something occurred. We might look at the top 10 sales against advertising for products and determine that more advertising shows higher sales.

    In the link above from MS Learn, what we typically do here is identify some anomaly or thing we want to explain, get data related to this, and then use some statistics to find a relationship.

    Predictive Analytics

    As you might guess, this type of analytics relate to the future. We are looking to predict what will happen. An example might be forecasting future demand for services.

    When you see a request to predict, forecast or extrapolate, think predictive analytics.

    Prescriptive Analytics

    This type of analysis was a little harder for me to understand or grasp. I get the general idea, but in prep I missed this one a few times. Prescriptive analytics are developing a prescription for how to change something.

    An example might be if I want to find where to cut costs to impact profit, I am looking for a set of things to change. I need a prescription on what will help me achieve my goal.

    In relation to the exam, this has to do with aiming for a goal (10% more or 12 less) and how to reach that goal. If you see specific numbers, usually that relates to a goal and prescriptive analytics.

    Cognitive Analytics

    This type of analysis has to do with thinking. In data analysis and computing, usually I think ML, AI, or some other type of data mining. This can be deriving conclusions or inferences from data, but the blend between this and the descriptive/diagnostic stuff becomes blurry.

    If you need to do speech to text or video transcription or image recognition, think cognitive.

    Summary

    This is how I viewed this techniques on the exam when answering questions:

    • Descriptive
      – What

    • Diagnostic
      – Why

    • Predictive
      – What will happen

    • Prescriptive
      – What do I do

    • Cognitive – Learning about data in new ways

  • Daily Coping 2 Mar 2022

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

    Today’s tip is to give sincere complements to people you talk to today.

    This was easy for me, mostly because I try to find positives in life. Just a few days ago I was at a larger volleyball tournament, and I went to see some kids that I have coached in the past. I got the chance to talk to some of them afterwards, and I complemented them on things that they did well, reminding them to be proud of the good things.

    They had plenty of negatives to say about themselves, and I don’t coach kids who are on other teams, so I only had complements.

    It was good to see the parents as well, and I thanked them for continuing to support their kids in volleyball, even though they aren’t on my team.

  • Goal Progress for Feb 2022

    I set goals at the beginning of the year, and I’m tracking my progress in these updates during 2022.

    February became more of a work month for me, and a somewhat busy month outside of work with life. I didn’t do enough on my career, and am more stalled than I’d like. I let distractions take over more than I should, and I felt a bit bad at the end of the month, rushing through some things the last week of Feb to make a little progress.

    I’m slowing down, but at least I did something. I’m lowering the grade because I just didn’t do enough.

    Grade: C+

    Here are the goals:

    Work

    • DP-900 – Passed
    • DP-300
      – Stated studying, practice tests around 60% correct
    • Demo with SQL Server – 5%
    • Demo with PostgreSQL – 0%
    • Demo with MySQL – 0%
    • Feedback book – 72%
    • Good Strategy/Bad Strategy – 0%

    Personal

    I made a slight alteration here. I didn’t try to hook up to Google Sheets, but instead pasted in some data and started to try and get this moving.

    • Link Google Sheets to Power BI – 0%
    • Create Report – 0%
    • Create Dashboard – 0%
    • Get people using it – 0%

    Community

    • Support the Colorado groups by speaking twice and helping get one event set up
      – 33%

      • CO Springs event set up
    • Speak at 3 other user groups outside of Colorado – 33%
      • Spoke at DBA Fundamentals group
    • Support SQL Saturdays – Help get 10 events run in 2022
      • 3 scheduled, 2 more close
    • Volunteer 4 days with Habitat – 0 days

  • Daily Coping 1 Mar 2022

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

    Today’s tip is to make a plan to change your daily routine for a day and see how you feel.

    I tend to follow the same routines often, usually work, gym, cook, maybe some fix or chore. Changing up a routine is good, but it can be hard.

    For me, I don’t sit still well. I usually have plenty of things to do, and I try to tackle something when I have free time. This might sound strange, but I don’t do well with taking days off. I’m either doing chores, fixing something, or coaching. Even my breaks for something like watching a football game are while I’m cooking or looking at the condensed game while playing guitar.

    I wasn’t sure what to do with this tip, but last weekend we didn’t have plans. Or I didn’t. My wife had to work, but we had a weekend off from coaching, no plans, weather wasn’t great, so I decided to relax. I read in bed, watched some Netflix, played some guitar, but didn’t work on anything new.

    I had a relaxed day, went to the gym later and sat on a bike for an hour, pedaling relatively slowly. Just taking it easy and doing a little work. I went to the store for groceries and had a relaxing time cooking dinner.

    It was an odd, low stress, no hurry day for me. Unlike most of my life. I enjoyed the leisure, but felt the next day like I hadn’t done enough. I’d wasted time.

    I accepted that, didn’t chastise myself, and moved on. Not likely to take many of those days, but I will take a few.