How do I validate insight results? AKA "too many data points to display"

Janet Wittenberg

The tabular insight is your best bet to validate your data.  Explore your data in a table before you go for the end goal of a bar chart or more complicated visualization.

Too many data points to display

The tabular insight can handle infinite scroll.  So when you see this message, change your insight type to tabular.  You won't lose the measures and attributes you've added to the insight, and you'll get some ideas on how you might add filters to the top of your insight to limit the data.

  

Tips: 

• Did you pick a school year, or the 'Date' attribute instead of since the beginning of time?
• Can School Level or Grade level reduce the scope of your analysis without losing meaning?

My numbers don't seem right

Flip to tabular view and add an identifying field like "Name" to the rows.  If you expect to be counting students or candidates accurately, your measure column should change to 1.  If it is greater than 1, start to add other attributes to your rows until you get it down to 1.  Such as

• School year (e.g. Has your candidate applied more than once to different entering years?)
• Term - This attribute helps limit grading or section enrollments to a meaningful range
• Section - Remember that Courses can occur multiple times in a term or year, so to get to actual rosters you need to consider sections
• Grade plan or Grade plan Grade:  If you are doing anything with grades, don't forget that every kind of effort grade is included by default.
• Candidate status - if you are using Candidate status date, be sure to check which Candidate statuses matter to your analysis - all are included by default.  A candidate may have a separate row for Inquiry, Application Complete, Decision, etc.
  • TIP: You can eliminate any statuses that don't make sense for Insights back in Enrollment Management > Admissions > Admissions Setup > Checklists > Statuses (Include on SKY Reports)

Some records I expect are missing

Are you trying to analyze your data as of right now, or trend data over time?

Beware of the trap of Active candidates or 'Current students'.

• Current students includes those 'currently studying or will study at your school' - That means if a student has withdrawn in the current school year, they are no longer included.   If you look at a prior year, this measure will tell you which of your Current students were also attending in that school year.  Said another way, students that are now graduated or now withdrawn will not be included in prior year counts in this measure.
• Use Students as the measure for any insight with historical time frame.
• Note the ? next to the measures in Insight designer to help clarify what a measure includes.
  
  We created Graduated students "Students that have graduated" and Withdrawn students "Students that have withdrawn or will be withdrawing" to help with this issue.
• Many schools move Candidates from Active to Inactive when they do not complete the admissions process or enroll.  Use this attribute or the choice of measure whether you are trying to analyze anyone who ever started the inquiry/application process (Candidates) or whether you are looking at Active candidates who are still in the funnel (regardless of Entering year).

I don't have access to the attributes I expect

• Always start building your insight by selecting the measure first.  The attribute list will reduce to the ones that are available for that measure.  If you are creating a combo insight visualization that includes different measures, the attributes are often reduced to the lowest common denominator.   The tabular insight allows you to add varied measures that aren't connected and you can filter within the measure itself instead of attempting to filter the whole insight.  (see more on filtering elsewhere in this forum)