In this continuation from Part One I share my thoughts on the early years of the community and how one person in particular set the tone for sharing knowledge and expertise. How did this start? There were a lot of really great people contributing to the community in Tableau’s early years. I’ve already mentioned Jonathan [...]
This is the first in a series of three blog posts that explores why what makes Tableau’s support community so special, why you should care, and what you can do to ensure that the community thrives. My sincere thanks go to Andy Cotgreave and Jonathan Drummey who reviewed an early draft and provided invaluable feedback. [...]
Finally, a good use for packed bubbles! The Problem I recently received a query from a client on how to compare responses to one question with responses to another question when both questions have possible LIkert values of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. That is, if you have a collection of questions like this: [...]
Overview In my experience the number one impediment to success with Tableau is getting data in a format that plays nicely with Tableau. Alteryx is a combination ETL (extract, transform, load), geospatial, and statistical modeling solution that just may solve this “getting-the-data-right” problem. And it plays very nicely with Tableau. In this blog I will [...]
Overview I was reading a very interesting blog post this weekend from which I learned that counseling may do little to help young people with drinking problems. Specifically, counseling reduces the average number of drinks consumed from 13.7 drinks per week to 12.2 drinks per week. I wondered if a visual might drive this point [...]
... and some thoughts on the evolving art and science of visualizing data I tend to gravitate towards occupations that are hard to explain. I started my professional life, and continue to be, a music arranger and orchestrator. I can tell by people’s perplexed looks that they are wondering if I’m the guy that decides where [...]
Overview I’ve had a spate of requests from clients to show how survey responses rank across different categories and I’ve come up with a way that makes it very easy to see where the big stories are. Note that this approach works for any measure that can be ranked, not just survey responses. Let’s see [...]
Note: Since writing this post in 2014, I have, in fact, become a fan of sparklines. That said, I continue to see many instances where I think the dashboard author could present data more clearly using a different approach. Make sure to read the comments at the end of the post. I’ve never been a [...]
Overview One of the new features in Tableau 8.1 that Tableau Software is trumpeting quite a bit is one-click Box and Whisker Plot generation. While I appreciate the new functionality, this chart type doesn’t “sing” to me the as much as jittering does. Indeed, this “jittering” capability was the BIG discovery for me in 2013. [...]
Overview I was stuck earlier this month trying to cajole Tableau into doing something I needed it to do so I contacted my friend Joe Mako. When it comes to Tableau, Joe is the "guru's guru." (Joe was the person that showed me how to create filled maps in Tableau before Tableau had native support [...]
