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Why I’m tracking the coronavirus using Power BI

I think it is important to note why one would want to try to follow along the discussions about the coronavirus. In my case, I used Power BI but others may have used other tools. Whatever tools one uses, I believe there are a lot of good benefits to trying to decipher the data alongside the journalists and doctors.

1 Learning Opportunity

I wanted to get more familiar with Power BI and I thought tracking the coronavirus in real time would be the perfect opportunity. While tracking it was kind of a morbid and distressing topic, it was useful for educational purposes.

2 Work with Data

Closely related to learning more about Power BI is learning to work with data: how to source it, how to deal with changing formats, and how to wrangle with the data.

3 Learn to Ask Creative Questions

I’m not sure I succeeded here because it was tough enough keeping up with the changes in the data sources and the Power BI graphing quirks. But it is important to try to ask questions that might provide you with a unique perspective or new insights. This questioning is something I will keep working on.

4 Learn from the journalists and doctors

As a side benefit, I got to follow along on how doctors, scientists and journalists interpreted the data. This was a unique opportunity to “sit alongside” those doctors and scientists and see how they think. This kind of opportunity doesn’t really happen very often outside of classrooms.

5 Challenge myself to see “trends” before others

Also, this was a great way to challenge myself to come up with a method that allowed me to “see trends” before others do. Can I come up with a graph or series of graphs or metrics that will help me discern when the virus was beginning to trend up ominously or trend down.

6 I can track the trends for my hometown

Finally, since the news didn’t report on my hometown’s data (or at least the news that I read), I have to be able to pull the data and develop the necessary graphics to see how my hometown is doing.

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