Hi there. Data analysts
spend a lot of time problem-solving,
and that means there's going to be
times when you get stuck,
but the trick is knowing what to do when that happens.
In this video, we'll talk about
the importance of knowing how to get help,
whether that means asking someone else for
help or searching the internet for answers.
Asking other people about
a problem you're having can help
you find new solutions that move a project forward.
It's always a good idea to
reach out to your peers and mentors,
especially if they're working with you on that project.
Your team members have valuable
knowledge and insight that can
help you find the solution you need to get unstuck.
Sometimes we spend a lot of
time spinning our wheels saying,
"I can do this myself," but we can be way more
productive if we engage with other people,
find new resources to lean on and try
to get as many voices as we can involved.
For example, let's say you're working with
the bike trip time data from the previous videos.
Maybe you're trying to find the average time
between bike rides in a given month.
Calculating the difference between
bike rides before midnight is easy,
but you can run into a problem if
the elapsed time crosses into the next day.
If someone went on a bike ride at 11:00 PM,
but the next ride wasn't until 06:00 AM,
your formula would return a negative number
because the end time is less than the start time.
You know that you can add one minus
the start time if two bike rides
start and end on different days,
but that formula won't work on
times that happened in the same day,
and it's pretty inefficient to scroll through
every bike ride to pinpoint these special cases.
You need to find a way to build a conditional formula,
but you aren't sure how.
You decide to check in with other analysts
working on your team to see if they have any ideas.
You could send them a quick email,
or stop by their desk,
to find out if they have a minute
to talk it over with you.
Turns out they had a similar problem
on a previous project,
and they're able to show you a conditional formula that
you could use to speed up your calculations.
Great! They suggest using an IF formula like this.
This basically says that,
"if the end time is larger than the start time,
replace the standard end time minus start
time formula with one minus start time plus end time."
Now it's also possible that your team members
don't have an answer; that's okay too.
There's definitely someone else with
the same problem asking the same questions online.
Knowing how to find solutions online is
an incredibly valuable problem-solving tool
for data analysis.
There's also all kinds of forums where
spreadsheet users can ask questions,
and you never know what you can turn
up with just a basic search.
For example, let's say you look
at "calculate number of hours between
times" spreadsheets and find
a helpful walk-through for
a more complicated formula using MOD.
This flips the negative values into
positive ones, solving your calculation problem.
Whether you're asking someone you know
or searching the internet for answers,
reaching out for help can give you
some really interesting solutions and
new ways to solve problems for future analysis.
Coming up, we'll learn even more about searching
for solutions online. See you soon.