It’s been over three months at my new job and I have already learnt a variety of new things. Working with a brilliant team of developers, I have been exploring the nitty-gritties of Spotfire and unraveling new functionalities every week. While there is a significant difference between the available functionalities for the client and web versions, Spotfire leads my list of best visualization tools to provide business insights. But what I have found most exciting recently is integrating it with Smarstheet.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Smartsheet, as the name suggests, is a smart sheet – essentially an Excel-meets-Trello-meets-Tableau platform. Tying it up with Spotfire gives you a pretty neat solution where on one end, you can create efficient workflows for your team to work directly on the data source and on the other, pull the data in to create great data visuals. To give you a simple example – you can set an automation in Smartsheet to send out email reminders to different members of your team to populate cells assigned to them and this data can then be pulled into the corresponding Spotfire dashboard. The only catch here is – you would need a Smartsheet business license to connect Smartsheet to Spotfire using the Live Data Connector.
As I continue to monitor things that are new in upcoming versions of Spotfire by following Neil Kanungo’s enlightening Dr. Spotfire sessions, I plan to keep an eye out for other such integrations to help my team build efficient processes and deliver fast, accurate business insights.
It’s all been a bit overwhelming. Yes, there is a global pandemic that has shaken things up for almost everybody on this planet. But that aside, the last few months have been an emotional roller coaster. I graduated with a Master’s degree in May, left behind some loved ones in Texas and moved to California in June, turned 35 (still can’t believe it!) in October… and throughout all this, kept looking for full time employment to land on my feet. So, you can imagine my thrill when I inform you that just as the year was nearing a disappointing end, I have joined Amgen in Thousand Oaks, California as a Clinical App & Analytical Services Manager.
I really can’t describe how I feel at this point. Relieved? Happy? Anxious? Motivated? While these words begin to describe my emotions, they don’t completely portray what’s going on. It’s been that kind of a year. What I do know is that I have been incredibly lucky throughout this journey. I am touched by the kind gestures of a number of people who have tried to help and support me. From the professors at my University to my friends and colleagues to strangers who admired my Resume song to a kind old friend who offered me a lifeboat in the form of a contract job to my cousin who suddenly reappeared in my life to play big brother – I have had so much love and warmth that my heart is full of gratitude. I also know that whatever is coming my way holds great value and can never be taken for granted.
I now move forward, with the entirety of my skills, dedication, and experience, to join Amgen’s mission to serve patients. As part of the R&D team, I’ll work for Global Development Operations and strive to provide meaningful analytical insights and business intellect using vital data. I am already moved by the warm welcome I have received at the firm, and am pumped to work with a brilliant global team. It’ll be amazing to employ my Python, Spotfire, data analytics, and business training and experience to help develop life-saving drugs. I am inspired by the incredible things Amgen has achieved over the years, and feel honored that I can be part of its upcoming feats.
On the personal front, I will soon be moving into a little apartment – my bachelor pad if you will – in Los Angeles! Once the virus is no longer a threat and it’s safe to step out again, I would love to explore the city of Hollywood. I’ve heard and read great things about southern California and can’t wait to check this part of the world out. Like anyone beginning life in a new city, I’m feeling the butterflies. Let’s see what 2021 has in store!
This will probably be my last post of the year. So, here’s wishing everyone reading this a merry Christmas and a marvelous new year! Happy Holidays!
Watching how genius coders are portrayed in movies and TV shows, I grew up with the impression that they are smug, arrogant, and often delusional. My experience interacting with them in the last couple of years has proved otherwise.
Be it the TIBCO Spotfire community where even the lead data scientists provide exceptional support and guidance to anyone interested, or the Alexa developers slack channel where patient SDEs answer your questions in great detail – the developer community has proven to be extremely welcoming and helpful. For instance, Justin Jeffress does a marvelous job hosting Alexa office hours on their Twitch channel where he answers questions from developers at all levels of expertise. Similarly, Neil Kanungo from Spotfire hosts great Dr. Spotfire sessions every month helping Spotfire developers get better at visualization and analytics.
Justin Jeffres hosting Alexa skills office hours
Stackoverflow continues to be the go-to for a bit more intermediate stuff and it is perhaps the only place where I’m still nervous to ask questions. However, even there, experts encourage you to learn in the right manner and point you in the right direction to get you started. If you are into Machine Learning, you are familiar with Andrew Ng, the man who is the pioneer of online education and has released a bunch of free courses on Coursera (which he co-founded).
The tech world is extremely challenging and constantly changing. You cannot stop learning for even a bit as you might get outdated in a jiffy. As such, it is reassuring to know that programmers have each other’s backs. Say what you will about these geeks, they can teach you a thing or two about camaraderie. After my theatre group, this is the second place where I have felt a sense of community and belonging. Nobody cares where you’re from and what the color of your skin is. They are all here to learn, build, and sometimes crack geeky jokes. Respect!
If you’re reading this and have ever helped someone understand the complications of programming – take a bow!
Tibco Spotfire is an excellent tool for wholistic data analytics solutions. Since I got certified as a Spotfire analyst, I have been working with different datasets to get well-versed with the nitty-gritties of Iron Python scripts in Spotfire. I recently conducted some exploratory data analysis with COVID-19 data and built a dashboard that –
points out trends in countries – those getting better and those getting worse
points out which countries have highest deaths per million and how these are not the same as countries with highest number of cases
describes which continent needs to be alarmed right now
collects user feedback and writes back to the data table using Iron Python
The dashboard uses buttons (Action Controls) to give you graphs of countries that are doing okay and those that need to do better. It also employs property controls and an IronPython script for a user to provide feedback which can then be written back to our data table, and with the right permissions, to our database.
Here is a short video of the COVID-19 Spotfire dashboard, and my commentary on how it works:
I was never an Alexa guy. Part of the reason is that I’m extremely happy with my Google Home Mini. She helps me with all the basic info I need, wakes me up and puts me to sleep, even flirts with me on Valentine’s Day. I’m a simple man and this is more than I can ask of my voice assistant. So I was enjoying my relationship with my Googlie! But then came COVID-19 followed by graduation followed by job hunting, during which phase I moved from Texas to California to live with a kind cousin who took me in during these testing times. He also introduced me to his friend who works at Amazon, on whose suggestion I started toying with Alexa Skill development. And I must say, Alexa has been sweeping me off my feet.
I started by creating an Amazon developer account, and going through a bunch of tutorials on building simple Alexa skills. Most of it was pretty straightforward. I called my skill Covid Info (the name you use to invoke the Alexa Skill). Then, I came up with a bunch of instances that the user will say – How many cases in USA, get Covid info for America, How many people have died due to COVID so far, and so on.
My first challenge was to connect my skill to an external API where it could pull this data from. After some trial and error, I was able to accomplish this and my skill started working at a basic national level.
I could ask questions like – how many cases were reported in USA yesterday? how many deaths due to covid so far? get coronavirus updates for america
Next, I wanted to work at the state level. How many cases in Texas yesterday? The problem here was that the API had state IDs and the user would say the entire state name. After playing around a bit with slot values and synonyms, I fixed this by introducing a dictionary where state ID keys had full state name values. This solved my problem. So, now when I asked for specific state info, Alexa responded as expected.
Latest screenshot of my Alexa skill in development
Once I validated my skill and got the clearance to submit it, I had to wait for a few hours before getting an email from Alexa.
Alas! I have to wait a bit longer to gain some recognition and respect among ALexa developers. It is becoming increasingly clear with every passing day that voice is the present and the future. Apps that are not voice controlled will soon become redundant, just like mobile phones with buttons were driven redundant by touch screens. So, it looks like I will be working a lot more towards my Alexa Skill development in the time to come.
In an attempt to practice my analytics coding skills, I thought I’ll put them to work in a topic that interests and affects many people across the globe. So, I used Python, NLP (natural language processing), matplotlib, seaborn, WordCloud, and Tweepy, to perform some basic analysis followed by a round of sentiment analysis on data extracted from recent tweets.
Through hands-on implementation of pandas, natural language processing, and #matplotlib, I learnt a bunch of stuff during this project including –
how to install and use wordcloud
how to create and use a twitter #developer account
how to install and use #tweepy
how to perform #sentimentanalysis on extracted data
While the project is not everything I wanted it to be, it provided some good practice in essential data science tools and techniques. I wrote a detailed description of this project in this article on LinkedIn. All the code for this project is posted on my github page.
The realization that I am lacking in so many aspects of data science is sometimes disheartening. However, I am determined to keep moving forward. The day I find myself to be an excellent data analyst cannot be too far, right?
Last summer I worked with a Game of thrones dataset for a visualization project. I was planning to revisit that dataset to unravel some more mysteries, when it occurred to me that I should look for something similar with my current favorite – The Office.
I found this wonderful dataset of lines from the show. It has dimensions like Speaker and Seasons making it a tempting dataset for a Tableau exercise. The first thing that came to mind was to get into Michael’s business – That’s What She Said!
Nothing surprising here – Michael obviously stands out! I was also interested in looking at the lines from a sentiment analysis point of view. It turns out that not many people laugh in the show (at least that’s what the script says). An analysis of the lines revealed some unusual observations –
Angela talks more than Oscar, and Toby talks more than Stanley
Dwight laughs more than Pam, and Toby more than Oscar
Looking at both these dashboards together, you can see that –
Season 4 has the maximum number of “That’s what she said”s but the lowest lines with characters laughing.
You can find the dashboard on my github page. I wanted to explore this further but I came across this amazing Tableau Public workbook, and this brilliant article where the author goes into data mining with R and word frequencies and character correlations. These are great inspirations for me to explore some other datasets and come up with interesting insights and dashboards.
I have been maintaining a countdown to graduation on a white board in my room. I started 616 days ago. This board has witnessed my journey more closely than anyone or anything else. It has seen the hundreds of activities I planned. It knows the ones that I checked off with a sense of pride and accomplishment. It has also seen the ones I erased after getting disheartened by unsuccessful attempts. It has observed the extent of my dreams and laughed at the ridiculousness of some of them. Sometimes, it has even served as a canvas for the artistic endeavors of my creative friends. But more than anything, it has been my companion that has kept me grounded and aligned. In many ways, this board is the Wilson to my Chuck Noland. This is what the board reads today.
What an incredible two years, these have been! There is no way I can find the words to describe exactly how I feel. So many new experiences, so many new friends, so many memories worth cherishing! I have tried to blog about it in bits and pieces but there’s so much more to these two years than what I have penned down. I desperately wanted to become a student again after almost 10 years in the work force. And my life at UTD turned out to be everything I had expected and more! It’s going to be difficult to say goodbye.
I completed my engineering in 2008. The world got hit by a recession. I am completing my Master’s degree in 2020. We are in the midst of a pandemic. Looks like I pick the worst years to graduate. My flatmate jokes that next time I plan to study again, I should inform him in advance so that he can be prepared! But may be there is a lesson here. Everything that happened since 2008 got me where I am today. And you know what? I did alright. I am still here – studying, working, enjoying myself, making new friends, looking forward to the next chapter. This tells me that despite everything that’s been happening, I will be okay. And so will each one of you!
The first picture I took of UTD – August 2018
That brings me to the man who reinstated my faith in myself and the process. Dr. Ganesh Janakiraman is a man of few words. It’s a shame that I met him so late in my Master’s journey. His Operations Management class is one of the most engaging, exciting, and productive classes I have taken not just at UTD, but in my life. But that’s not the only reason I am grateful to this brilliant professor. It’s because of his kindness as a human being. I met him outside of class for the first time in his office to discuss the results of a test. Ever since the day we had that chat, Dr. Janakiraman has been an encouraging voice and a driving force. In the past few months, when times have become tough and it’s so easy for me to doubt myself and get boggled by the uncertainty of what the future holds, his words have inspired me to stay strong. Every time I have a conversation (mostly email) with Dr. Janakiraman, there’s this voice inside me that goes – YOU GOT THIS. Like he says – “The process might be slow but that only means we go ahead with more energy.”
Dear Dr. Janakiraman, if you’re reading this – Your kind and genuine efforts to help me out during this phase have moved me. All your teachings and advice will stay with me forever, and play a big role in whatever becomes of me.
And on that note, it’s time to bring this 10-article series to a close with a quote by another profound man. The great Indian actor Irrfan Khan left us a few days ago. Before he did, he left this pearl of wisdom for his son and I think it applies to each one of us, especially now more than ever –
“Learn to surrender to the dance of uncertainty and trust your faith in the universe.”
This is the tenth and final article of my #10DaysToGraduate series where I share 10 key lessons from my Master’s degree in the form of a countdown to May 8 (today), my graduation date. Time to start over.
One of the advantages of the Information Technology and Management program at The University of Texas at Dallas is that it has the perfect curriculum design for learning the fundamentals of many pillars of IT. Of course, it is important to pick one focus and develop your skills in it. But with every passing day, the tech industry is evolving in a way where cross-functions and integrations are the norm. You need to be able to wear many hats. So, it makes sense to explore topics which might not really be your focus, but still fall in the technology umbrella. This is why, I was happy with my decision of taking IT Security and IT Audit and Risk Management, two subjects that enhanced my basic knowledge of some of the most promising and vital aspects of Information Technology.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
My cyber security class, led by the profound Prof. Nate Howe, was eye-opening as it got me well-versed with so many IT risk and security aspects. I understood the entire structure of IT security functions in an organization with a sneak peek into responsibilities of the Chief Information Security Officer. The class took me to interesting avenues like the CIA objective, Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery, ransomware and the anatomy of an attack, TCP/IP basics, secure – SDLCs and IT Control Frameworks. The class ended on a high note with guest speakers and industry professionals coming in to give demos of Kali Linux and penetration testing. It sure got me excited about exploring Kali Linux more, in the future.
The IT Audit and Risk Management class was a lot of fun, despite being so full of theory. This was because of the cool Prof. Joseph Mauriello, who always kept us engaged with his sense of humor and class-end quizzes. This class was the reason I became a member of the student chapter of ISACA – a club that had the best meet-ups and the most delicious food. In Prof. Mauriello’s class, I learnt the fundamentals of auditing IT governance controls, operating system and network controls, types of DOS attacks, and Risks associated with different IT functions and ERP systems. It is thanks to this class, that I know about the ACL software, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and the Fraud triangle.
The IT Audit group
While these subjects were not in line with my analytics focus, taking them was absolutely worth it as they served as essentials training of fundamental IT concepts. I also made some really cool friends (Hi Micah, Marie, Jeyaraj, Chloe, Diksha!) whom I enjoyed spending classwork and project time with. And that brings us to the professor, whom I have thanked several times but my series cannot be complete without him. I call him Master Yoda for without his guidance, I wouldn’t have been able to walk even two steps in this long path. I’m talking about the Program Director of MS Business Analytics at UTD, Dr. Bill Hefley.
Team Travelytics with Dr. Hefley
You might think that it is weird for me to be talking about Dr. Hefley in a post describing my experience in subjects that do not fall under his Business Analytics domain. But that is precisely why Dr. Hefley is an extremely special teacher to me. I had joined UTD as a MS BA student and had moved to ITM after my first semester as it aligned better with my experience and goals. Despite this, Dr. Hefley has continued to be my guardian angel. As faculty advisor for Travelytics, he has made sure everyone in our team has someone to go to. To me personally, he has been someone I can always write to (and I hope it continues to be that way) or walk up to. Every interaction with him has been warm and comforting. With his fun one-liners and cheerful yet informative emails, he is someone who is always there to cheer me up and keep me going. So, at the risk of boring you with my gratitude one more time, Dr. Hefley – THANK YOU.
This is the ninth post of my #10DaysToGraduate series where I share 10 key lessons from my Master’s degree in the form of a countdown to May 8, my graduation date.
For the past 20 months, this question has been answered by two contradicting voices in my head. The first voice, that has the personality of a sane, organized, professional human, encourages me to focus on numbers and metrics, and sticking to the point, and tweaking the Resume as per corporate guidelines, and following pre-defined templates, and using popular keywords. The other voice is a vagabond and a rebel shouting – “Why follow the format? Let’s add pictures and colors and mention everything that makes you cool. How else would you stand out?” Right from the first semester, I have been struggling to settle the dispute between these two voices. As a result, my Resume now looks like their marriage certificate.
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
Despite having worked on my Resume several times in the past, it took me a lot of trial and error to get to the one I am currently using to apply for jobs. In fact, it is still evolving and changes with most job applications depending upon the job role and company. There are several reasons why it was particularly challenging for me to nail down a good Resume. First – my profile is a bit weird. My experience over the past decade (after completing my Engineering in Electronics and Telecommunication) ranges from Product Manager at an IT book publishing firm to Bollywood actor to flood relief volunteer to travel content writer and team manager to graduate student. Trying to display everything I want in one page proved to be a bit of a challenge.
Second – I am targeting two types of roles – one that aligns more with my past experience and another that aligns with my recent education and career interest. Coming up with two perfect sales pitches for these two different types of jobs was an interesting challenge but something that I thoroughly enjoyed. After a lot of trial and error, and leaving out a bunch of stuff I thought makes me “awesome”, I was able to make some progress.
Thankfully, you are never alone in the resume-building process. My resume-building journey began with the Professional Development class in Fall 2018. I then took a trip to the Career Management Center at UTD where most of what I had put down was crossed out and I was given a new, professional format. It helped me get my experience in the STAR format with metrics showcasing how my work actually accounted to achieving something for my firm. I tweaked it a bit as per my personality. But at one point I got carried away. One of the biggest blunders I made was included a terrible picture of myself working on a project in my Resume, thinking that it will make me stand out. A recruiter at the UTD career fair rightly gave me an earful saying that such a Resume is extremely difficult to read, and the ATS will never pick something like this up.
So, I decided to grow the hell up and act like a professional. I cleaned up the format, removed my picture, and tried to paint it with my words. Over a period of time, I also asked friends and colleagues to review my resume, all of whom gave me great (sometimes contradicting) feedback. I also used a lot of advice given by Austin Belcak on LinkedIn and in his emails (yes, I am a subscriber). Thanks to his expertise and some very helpful tips from major corporations like Google and MIT, I think I have two Resumes that can get the job done. Whether they really get me a job is still to be seen.
This is the sixth post of my #10DaysToGraduate series where I share 10 key lessons from my Master’s degree in the form of a countdown to May 8, my graduation date.
