Check what AI gives you in three steps
To know whether the AI got it right, you don't need to know more Excel. What you already know about your numbers is enough.
You go at your own pace, with your Maestro beside you, 1:1, through the whole course: ask it anything, and it asks you questions too.
8 skills · 2 modules
What you'll be able to do
Each box is a skill. The base is at the bottom, recognizing and explaining, and you work your way up to building something of your own and judging what works and why. Hover over a box to see what it builds on. Click it to see where I teach it and how your Maestro checks it.
- Analyze
- Apply
- Understand
- Remember
Analyze
Reconcile a result with an independent number you already trust, and explain any difference
Where I teach it: Three steps to check a formula · Reconcile with a number you already know
Builds on:
- Check a result against what you expect: order of magnitude, totals, ranges, and published references
Your Maestro asks you to break a problem down with it and saves it as evidence when you do.
Apply
Spot-check a result by recomputing a few rows by hand, spread across the start, middle, and end
Where I teach it: Three steps to check a formula · Check a few rows by hand
Your Maestro asks you to use it on a new case and saves it as evidence when you do.
Test a formula, query, or code with a case whose answer you already know, including an edge case such as a value that isn't there
Where I teach it: Three steps to check a formula · Try to make it fail
Your Maestro asks you to use it on a new case and saves it as evidence when you do.
Check a result against what you expect: order of magnitude, totals, ranges, and published references
Where I teach it: Three steps to check a formula · Reconcile with a number you already know
Your Maestro asks you to use it on a new case and saves it as evidence when you do.
Understand
Understand why checking AI's work takes the same expertise as the work it automates
Where I teach it: From the formula to the agent · You already do data engineering
Builds on:
- Understand AI in data work as an extension of your expertise, where you answer for the result
Your Maestro asks you to explain it in your own words and saves it as evidence when you do.
Understand AI in data work as an extension of your expertise, where you answer for the result
Where I teach it: From the formula to the agent · You already do data engineering
Your Maestro asks you to explain it in your own words and saves it as evidence when you do.
Recognize that much of your expertise is tacit: standards and habits you apply without stating them
Where I teach it: From the formula to the agent · Ask for the test up front
Your Maestro asks you to explain it in your own words and saves it as evidence when you do.
Remember
Know the ways an AI's answer with data can drift from what you need: decisions you didn't ask for, results that look right and count something else, and made-up values
Where I teach it: Three steps to check a formula · An erratum
Your Maestro asks you to recognize and recall it and saves it as evidence when you do.
What we'll cover
Three steps to check a formula
From the formula to the agent
What you get
- 2 modules and 9 pages, open whenever you want them.
- Videos inside the lessons.
Open to everyone: read all of it, and your Maestro, an AI, answers one question per page, on up to five pages a day.
With a free account: your Maestro for the whole course, always on the page you're on, and the exercises run with nothing to install.
Who's teaching you
Sergio Sánchez
At my first job, at PPIC, we published a table with the numbers computed correctly but in the wrong row. It went past four people and nobody saw it. What made me mad was that nothing warned me at the time. Today AI gives you formulas and tables that run without a single error, and the question is the same: how do you know it's right? These three steps are my answer, and you already do them, even if you don't call them that.
I'm Sergio, chekos online. I've worked with data for about ten years, mostly at mission-driven organizations: policy research first, then education, and now early childhood services. In 2018 I started tacosdedatos to share what I was learning, and since then it's been a blog, a podcast, courses, guides, and a community. These days I spend a lot of my time building with AI agents and writing about how I organize my work around them. I share what I've learned; you take what's useful and make it yours.
See you in the course
Check what AI gives you in three steps