PORTFOLIO PROJECTS

My name is Mia Van de Vondervoort and I am a detail-oriented and creative Data Analyst living in Ontario, Canada.

Skills include:
  • creating effective data visualizations using a variety of tools including Excel, R and Tableau,
  • building intuitive and easy to use dashboards to empower users to self-serve, and
  • clearly summarize key analysis findings in an easy to understand way

Below are a variety of projects to illustrate these skills.


(1) Factors of Airbnb Pricing in Europe

Link: Factors of Airbnb Pricing Dashboard

Description: An interactive dashboard which allows the user to explore how a selection of different variables affect Airbnb pricing across European cities.

Technologies: R/RStudio

Skills:
  • created a variety of plots using ggplot
  • added interactivity, whereby user selections will update the displayed plot, using shiny
  • formatted dashboard into multiple pages and separated components into different columns using flexdashboard


(2) Increasing Profits through Coordinated Decrease of Discounts (Superstore Sales)

Tableau Public Links:
Interactive Dashboard
Story Point Presentation

Description: Project completed for the Data Visualization with Tableau Specialization offered on Coursera. Objective of the project was to investigate if there is a relationship between discounted sales and profits, and determine what, if any, opportunities exist for efficiencies with respect to how discounts are handled.

Technologies: Tableau

Skills:
  • utilized filters to add interactivity
  • summarized findings in clear and easy to understand presentation using story points


(3) Popular Music on Spotify

Link: Popular Music on Spotify Dashboard

Description: Final project completed for the Data Visualization & Dashboarding with R Specialization offered on Coursera. A multi-page dashboard exploring the common characteristics of popular music.

Technologies: R/RStudio

Skills:
  • filtered and reshaped dataset using tidyverse package before generating plots
  • highlighted key values/findings using valuebox widgets
  • created a variety of plots using ggplot
  • added interactivity and dashboard formatting using shiny and flexdashboard packages


(4) What Makes a Movie Successful?

Tableau Public Link: What Makes a Movie Successful Dashboard

Description: Final project completed for the Data Visualization with Tableau Specialization offered on Coursera. Objective of the project was to determine common characteristics among the most popular movies on TMDb using KPIs average profit and public popularity.

Technologies: R/RStudio for data cleaning and reshaping, Tableau for data visualizations

Skills:
  • choose the best visualization to display specific findings
  • utilized colour as a preattentive attribute to draw attention to the most important part of a visualization
  • decluttered visualizations to minimize the likelihood of the user being distracted by unnecessary details
  • reshaped data with R using tidyverse package, specifically with regards to the genre field which in the original data was a list of all applicable genres and in my reshaped dataset had one record per unique movie to genre association


(5) Common Characteristics Among Studio Ghibli Characters

Tableau Public Link: Common Characters Amoung Ghlibi Characters Dashboard

Description: Explore the common characteristics among Studio Ghibli characters in an interactive dashboard.

Technologies: Tableau

Skills:
  • utilized actions to add interactivity to the dashboard
  • created a calculated field to group different special power types together

INTERESTS & HOBBIES

Why I am Interested in Being a Data Analyst?

One of the reasons why I am interested in pursuing a career as a data analyst is because it is a wonderful combination of both analytical skills and creativity.

On the analytical side to be a strong Data Analyst you need to be able to:
  • clearly identify a question or problem which needs to be solved
  • break down a problem or process into smaller elements in order to develop a solution
  • extract key findings from a large amount of data
  • effectively communicate with a variety of individuals with different levels of technical knowledge and background
While, being creative allows you to:
  • propose different solutions to a problem
  • think up unique ways of looking at data during exploratory analyzes
  • be more open minded and explore different perspectives


Amigurumi

One of my hobbies is designing and making amigurumi, which is the art of creating stuffed yarn creatures through crocheting or knitting. I love to make amigurumi because it also requires you to use both the analytical side of your brain and the creative side of your brain. The largest project I have created so far is a three foot tall gnome, complete with bow and arrows.

In amigurumi design, the analytical side shows up mainly during the planning process. When creating my gnome my planning process looked like:
  • pulling together a number of inspiration pictures to get a general idea of what I wanted to make
  • deciding on a colour palette, which started as greens and greys (and I always wanted her to have red hair)
  • finding and acquiring necessary supplies (yarn, stuffing, wooden dowels for internal structural support)
  • determining basic body proportions and the measurements needed for her to end up being 3 feet tall

Then, when some basic planning is done you need to dive in and go for it.

Creativity comes into the equation when:
  • creating the vision of what you want to create
  • problem solving when things don’t work out the way you originally wanted with the first attempt