Yearly Archives: 2015

In Praise of Tableau Public

By |2015-12-09T07:17:25+00:00December 9th, 2015|General Discussions|

Overview In an October 2015 meeting of the Tableau Zen Masters each Zen Master was asked to name his / her favorite thing about Tableau.  Most people started by saying “well, besides the community, my favorite thing is…” At the time I said “undo”.  Don’t laugh.  Let’s not take it for granted that with Tableau [...]

Be Careful with Dual Axis Charts

By |2015-11-10T06:14:35+00:00November 10th, 2015|Business Visualizations, General Discussions, Makeovers|

Overview Several weeks ago the data visualization community broke into justified outrage over an inexcusably misleading dual-axis chart from Americans United for Life.  I plan to write an article about this and other “ethically wrong” visualizations in a few weeks but in the meantime I encourage you to read these excellent posts from Alberto Cairo [...]

Getting Survey Data “Just So”

By |2020-06-23T15:25:35+00:00October 13th, 2015|Visualizing Survey Data|

Overview In writing about visualizing survey data using Tableau I’ve found that the number one impediment to success is getting the data in the right format. In accompanying posts I'll explain how to get this done using Tableau Prep, Alteryx, Easymorph, and Tableau 10.x. What do I mean by “just so”? When I deal with survey data [...]

Balancing Accuracy, Engagement, and Tone

By |2020-02-25T15:30:53+00:00September 23rd, 2015|Business Visualizations, General Discussions, Makeovers|

Overview I recently wrote about emotional vs. accurate comparisons and several people questioned whether the word “emotional” was appropriate.  (Several people questioned my assertions, too.  You can read their comments here.) For this discussion I’ll use the term “engagement” in place of “emotion” and we’ll look into the challenges of creating public-facing visualizations that attract [...]

Tableau’s Confusing Nomenclature

By |2015-09-21T10:39:50+00:00September 21st, 2015|Business Visualizations, General Discussions|

Overview I've conducted a lot of Tableau training classes and have found three things that confuse students simply because of the nomenclature Tableau uses for these things.  These three terms are Headers Table Calculations Quick Filters Headers Consider the chart below that has both mark labels and an axis along the bottom. Figure 1 [...]

Accurate vs. Emotional Comparisons – Sometimes Pies, Bubbles, and Waffles are the Better Choice

By |2020-02-25T15:29:54+00:00September 15th, 2015|Business Visualizations, General Discussions|

Overview Figure 1 – Bar charts are better than pie charts are better than donut charts.  Most of the time. As anyone who has read this blog knows I’m definitely a “bar charts are better than pie charts are better than donut charts” kind of guy, at least when you need to [...]

In Praise of Treemaps

By |2015-09-01T06:41:23+00:00September 1st, 2015|Business Visualizations, General Discussions|

Overview I’ll admit that I have a problem with treemaps in Tableau, but it's not because the chart type is in some way inferior. My problem is with how people use - and misuse - treemaps. Here’s a good example of misuse.  Instead of displaying something straightforward that looks like this… Figure 1 -- The humble, [...]

Title