Power BI Class Five

James Stratton

November 20, 2021

Plan for Today Updating in Excel Updating with DAX Finishing Up

Plan for Today

Today, we are working on changing data in Power BI

There are two ways to change data
1 Download the data, change in Excel, then upload back to Power BI
2 Change in Power BI directly, using DAX, the language of Power BI

Today we will be using data from loan applications

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Getting Familiar with Data

To get started, try making these visualizations . . .

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New visualization

What if we wanted to make the visualization below?

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Updating Data

Make the change to the Excel file

Change the source in Power BI

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Change Source

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Change Source

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Introduction to DAX

Data Analysis Expressions DAX is the language of Power BI

Think of it like the formulas you use in Excel
Goal for our lessons
7 Learn every command in DAX
3 Learn how DAX works
3 Learn a few important commands in DAX
3 Know enough about DAX to Google what we don’t know

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Things we can do with DAX

There are three things we can do with DAX . . .

But they all follow the same rules

Today: new columns
Tomorrow: new measures
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The Structure of DAX

When we add a new column, a formula bar appears

On the left is the name of the column we’re creating

Then there is an equals sign
After the equals sign, we type the expression/formula we want to use

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The Structure of DAX

We have education cost in total, and number of students in each

household
Imagine that we wanted to calculate education cost per student
The formula would be . . .
EducCosts = ’My Data’[Cost per year for all students]/’My Data’[Number
of students]
What do you notice?
§ The table name is in speech marks ’ ’
§ The column name is in brackets [ ]
§ Everything else is like Excel!

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Some Simple Formulas in DAX

Most simple formulas are the same as Excel: `, ´, ˆ, ˜

Calculate the following variables:
§ Total revenue per person
§ Number of family members who are not students
§ Profit per acre (i.e. revenue per acre - costs per acre)
Make a card (remember from last week?) to show me your average
for each of these
§ If you have time, add a slicer by village!

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Some Simple Formulas in DAX: ‘if’

The command ‘if’ is very similar to Excel
Imagine we want to know: do people who have been customers for a
long time spend more or less on total family costs?

Make a new called ‘Over Five Loans’ that is ‘Yes’ if Loan Count is at
least 5, and ‘No’ if Loan Count is less than 5
Do it the same way as you would in Excel!
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Some Simple Formulas in DAX: dates

The command ‘TODAY()’ gives today’s date
You can subtract two dates from one another to get the gap between
them
Sometimes this doesn’t work – you have to times it by one to tell
DAX you want a number!
For example, say we want to make a variable which is days since
disbursement
Our first guess might be . . .
Days Since Disbursed = TODAY() - ‘My Data’[DisbursedDate]
This does not work!
Let’s try . . .
Days Since Disbursed = 1*(TODAY() - ‘My Data’[DisbursedDate])
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Some Simple Formulas in DAX: dates

Try to make a visualization like the below . . .

You will need to use a formula to create a column for days until due!
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Finishing Up

Last bit of practice: can you make the graphs you’ve made today into
a Dashboard?

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