"Don't Worry...Be Happy!"

The data collection site, Kaggle.com offers a cornucopia of choices for datasets to use for this week's assignment in exploring, analyzing and manipulating data. I chose "The World Happiness Report" thinking this would be a joy-inducing experience.  Um...no.

What it revealed was a striking lack of comfort and ability in dealing with large datasets and spreadsheets. It exposed a growth frontier that I was ill-equipped to traverse.

This week's assignment had several parts:

So let's have at it:

1. Locating and downloading data from public sources 

Ok...got this.  I went to Kaggle and found a set to use. It had a conveniently located download button and I was able to put it into my computer Downloads folder. Success!

2.  Being able to import that data into a spreadsheet program.

Having recently used Google Slides and found it intuitive and much like Power Point, I thought I would try using Google Sheets.  I opened that up and was able to download the spreadsheet. Yay!

3. Cleaning up data in the spreadsheet, reorganizing columns, locating and fixing missing data, making sense of the various fields in the data.

And so it begins...

The first thing I noticed was my reluctance (fear?!) in dealing with the amount of data, the abundance of rows and columns, the niggly wraparound of data and my inability to even properly highlight specific fields. It took me almost an hour to figure out how to grab non-sequential information. Thank goodness for the "Version History" option which allowed me to revert back to earlier changes. I finally decided to leave the original data set and make a copy which I renamed "Working Copy - Happiness."

OOPS! - I lost my Column Headings.  Nope...I have no idea where they went or how to get them back.

4. Sorting and filtering data

Dispensing with the notion that I would ever find my column headings or 'clean up' missing data (or eat dinner), I moved on to deleting columns that weren't necessary for the beautiful charts that I envisioned creating. I then created a second sheet with only this data. I felt I could more easily work with just the Country Name, Region and Ranking . Hahahahahahaha...no.

Next up...

5. Using formulas to manipulate data,  6. Using pivot tables to aggregate and summarize data and,  7. Creating graphs or other charts to visualize data.

Seriously??

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!  (Sorry...I had a moment.)

My intention at this point was to create a simple pie chart that showed the relationship between"ranking and region."  In other words, "was Western Europe happier than Latin America?"

I completely and utterly failed in this endeavor, though I did manage to inadvertently create some colorful images:

But neither of these charts produced the necessary information.

I believe the problem is not so much with the mechanics of the task, as I am very comfortable with other platforms with multiple key strokes and formulas.  This is an old issue for me with how to set up a problem. How do I craft the question using the available data? What is the specific question I am asking? Which part of the data is the Y axis and which is the X? Am I looking for ratios? Word problems were always a bugaboo for me on exams and I think that I'm in that same 'stuck place' with data manipulation.

I'm a work in progress.

I'll get this yet.

In the meantime, it's my intention to keep plugging away and also find my professor during his office hours and do some screen sharing!

 ~ J