The challenge today was to create a dashboard in Power BI by connecting to men’s NCAA basketball data within a google cloud data source. as well as any using supporting data needed.
Despite setbacks, I managed to create a very insightful dashboard with a different style than I would typically go for.
- Planned: 11am-11:30am Actual: 11am-12pm
Select Data and Connect to source in Power BI - Planned: 11:30am-2:30pm Actual: 12pm-3:30pm
Analyse data for key insights to develop a story- gather any supporting data.
Build preliminary charts for dashboard. - Planned 2:30pm-4pm Actual 3:30pm-6pm
Format Dashboard and prepare story - Planned 4pm-5pm Actual 6pm-8:15pm
Finishing touches on dashboard add any additional visuals to add value - Planned 5pm-5:30pm Actual 8:15pm-8:45pm
Write Blog for Tuesday’s Challenge
I fell quite behind my initial schedule, but it was bound to happen this week. I ended up falling down a rabbit hole when trying to find additional insights and supporting data. Which isn’t a bad thing necessarily as the additional work done wasn’t to anyone’s detriment.
The first thing I did was check the documentation and data information from the website. I decided to connect to the season and tournament games data tables as they had some very interesting historical data, and I would be able to drill down and focus on an area with an interesting story.
When I started exploring the data initially, I was trying to find any interesting game data from the tournament table as ‘March Madness’ (The national championships tournament) is known for having some devasting upsets of fan favourites. That’s when I found the interesting dynamic between Villanova University and The University of North Carolina when it came to the National Championship, so I decided to build my dashboard on that.
Next was trying to create a relationship between the tables. I had an issue because neither table had a unique field to connect with. I found an easy fix by calling the sports radar API to pull the team information and connected the tables with that. This also fixed the problem of the inconsistent naming and table structure between the two tables.
I then started building the dashboard which was pretty straight forward. I went for a static comparative visual, so it was easy to follow and can be enjoyed by a wider audience. once I was nearing the end of the dashboard, I decided it would be interesting to comparing how much each University spent on their men’s basketball program every year. This proved to be quite difficult as they are not required to publish their financial data, so I had to settle for estimates based off numbers reported to news outlets.
once I finished my dashboard, I felt pretty satisfied with the outcome. It had nice formatting, clear yet powerful insights and met all the requirement of the task. Overall, this was a fun second day of Dashboard week. Ready for Wednesday.
If you want to view the dashboard close up, it can be found here.
