Bar charts are widely recognized as one of the best visualizations for communicating data. They help to rank, sort and compare values easily. Sometimes, situations arise in which you’d like to see a bar charts broken down so that each row of data is a single square that contributes toward a total bar.
In teaching Tableau, I came across a visual I think is really fun and interesting.
When you are working with survey data, you will occasionally come across situations where survey questions were multiple choice and those multiple choices responses are comma-delimited in a single cell.
I was recently asked by a student how they could compare several years of monthly values to the monthly average over that time span. They had something like this in mind…
The first thing to understand about top filters in Tableau is where they fall in Tableau’s order of operations.
Figuring out what to do with filters in a Tableau dashboard can be a headache. You don’t want them to take up too much screen real estate but want them to look nice and be intuitive. Getting them all to be the same size can be a hassle. Here are some tricks I use to help everything come together.
It is well documented that using a Tableau Data Extractsin lieu of a live connection to a data source usually provides a faster querying experience for end users. What is not well documented are some of the errors that can pop up when working with extracts.
Hiding data in a Tableau worksheet is usually as simple as right-clicking on a label and selecting hide.
For a while, I’ve been speculating about what percent of an “average” person’s income goes toward taxes and government programs. I’ve also been wondering how people can make a great income and still have little money left for savings and retirement.
One of the challenges of busy dashboards in Tableau is that it can be hard to tell if a filter has been applied.
Tableau Prep is a new desktop application (released spring, 2018) provided by Tableau to assist with complex data preparation.
One of the frustrating data formats that can make data unusable in Tableau is report-formatted spreadsheet that have headers with following blanks.
Working with milliseconds in Tableau is tricky. While Tableau does technically handle milliseconds, they aren’t as flexible as other date units like days and hours.
Sets and Groups are two distinct ways of creating predefined subsets of data in Tableau. While they seem similar at a high level, they have some significant differences.
Storytelling is about creating a shared experience. It means listening to where people are and what they are seeking. When we use this approach for our dashboard delivery, it creates a shared solution.
As Steve Jobs shared, “… [Design] is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”