Updates: New Data Drill + Copilot for Excel course!

Happy Monday! Two things worth knowing about this week:

First, we've launched a new Data Drill! This one is called "Booking Breakdown":

Your dataset contains ~40,000 reservations for a 200-room resort hotel in Portugal, including the booking date, check-in & check-out dates, and a cancellation flag.

Your task is to calculate the resort's occupancy rate for each month in the dataset.

If you haven't tried one before, these are free, hands-on practice problems you can solve with any tool: SQL, Excel, Python, Power BI, whatever you're working in.

They're a great way to keep skills sharp between projects, and we always share our instructors' solutions with their favorite tools next month!

Grab the dataset and give it a shot: https://mavenanalytics.io/data-drills/booking-breakdown

As always, feel free to share your Data Drill solutions here when you're ready, or tag us in a post on LinkedIn. :)

Second, we just launched a new course: Copilot in Excel.

Technology is moving faster than ever, and Enrique’s been hard at work behind the scenes.

Rebuilt from the ground up, we are thrilled to share that his new Microsoft Copilot for Excel course is LIVE!

This is a hands-on, practical course designed to help you leverage Copilot's most up-to-date features in Excel.

You'll learn to solve real-world problems across a variety of common scenarios and workflows, including cleaning data, auditing workbooks, creating spreadsheets, analyzing data, and building dashboards.

We'll also apply best practices for using Copilot effectively and responsibly…

Using "Allow Editing" and "Chat Only" Modes
Selecting Models (OpenAI vs. Anthropic)
Writing Effective Prompts
Undoing & Managing Changes
Validating Results

…and more!

If you’re ready to work smarter and faster than ever in Excel, this is the course for you.

Check it out here: https://mavenanalytics.io/course/microsoft-copilot-for-excel

We've got some major updates coming in the weeks ahead, so be sure to keep checking back!

u/Dakota_from_Maven — 3 days ago

▲ 13 r/learnSQL+2 crossposts

Most people learn SELECT, WHERE, GROUP BY, and call it done. Then they hit a problem that GROUP BY can't solve — and that's usually when window functions finally click.

Here's the short version of what they do:

They let you perform calculations across a set of rows related to the current row, without collapsing the data into groups. So you can calculate a running total, rank records, or compare each row to a previous one...

...all while keeping every row intact.

The functions you'll use most often:

ROW_NUMBER() — assigns a unique rank to each row within a partition. Great for deduplication.

RANK() / DENSE_RANK() — similar, but handles ties differently. Useful for leaderboards or top-N problems.

LAG() / LEAD() — pulls a value from the previous or next row. The fastest way to do period-over-period comparisons.

SUM() / AVG() OVER() — running totals and moving averages without subqueries.

The syntax that trips people up at first is the OVER() clause — that's where you define the window. PARTITION BY works like GROUP BY (but doesn't collapse rows), and ORDER BY sets the order within each partition.

Once this clicks, you'll start seeing problems differently. A lot of things that used to require subqueries or self-joins become one clean window function.

What's your go-to window function, and what problem does it solve for you?

reddit.com

u/Dakota_from_Maven — 3 days ago

▲ 2 r/mavenanalytics

Hey everyone! Now that we're already almost a week into May, we want to know:

What are you working on this month?

It could be anything, like:

Finishing a Maven course you started
Building or improving a portfolio project
Practicing SQL / Python / BI tools
Experimenting more with AI in your workflow
Prepping for interviews or job applications
Or just staying consistent with your learning

A lot of people in this space are feeling the pace of change right now. New tools, new expectations, more noise.

Our take: the goal isn’t to chase everything; it’s to stay consistent, build real skills, and learn how to use AI as an advantage.

If you’re up for it, drop your May goal(s) below.

Even better if you share where you’re starting from.

We’ll be in here with you, and cheering you on!

reddit.com

u/Dakota_from_Maven — 8 days ago

▲ 3 r/mavenanalytics

What did you accomplish this month that you're proud of? Did you...

Finish a project?

Learn a new tool?

Get an interview?

Build a dashboard you’re proud of?

Finally understand window functions?

No win is too small -- we want to celebrate with you!

reddit.com

u/Dakota_from_Maven — 15 days ago

▲ 6 r/mavenanalytics

In case you missed our update last week:

We are thrilled to offer our Spring Skillup event from Tuesday, April 21st (today!) through Thursday, April 30th, complete with free course access and live events!

We've got some great live learning sessions lined up with our experts to help you master new skills & level up your data + AI knowledge for FREE. Enrique Ruiz is live NOW sharing how you can use the new Copilot in your Excel projects, and if you register for the events you'll get the replay emailed to you directly!

You can learn more and sign up here: https://mavenanalytics.io/spring-skillup

Hope to see you at Spring Skillup!

u/Dakota_from_Maven — 23 days ago