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. Â 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 [...]
Bob Dylan – folk hero to thousands if not millions  – caused a furor when he appeared at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival with ... an electric guitar! If you read about the incident you’ll discover that there was a mammoth sense of betrayal within the folk-centric fold. How could their hero embrace rock music? [...]
My problem with most infographics is that they sacrifice accuracy and clarity for whimsy and cuteness. While I understand the desire to "draw the reader" in, I believe it's critical that the information and the story not be misleading. So, imagine my delight when I thought I had found an infographic that was spot-on accurate and fun and engaging. [...]
I spend half my time as a musician and the other half as a data visualization "scientist". Â I love both professions but one downside shared by both professions is that I cannot listen to music nor glance at a chart without trying to figure out what is going on inside the music and inside the [...]
We begin a new feature this month where I look at some recently-published data visualizations and offer suggestions on how they can be improved. I'll start with the MASIE Center's Mobile Pulse Survey results. Â For those of you that don't know, The MASIE Center is a Saratoga Springs, NY think tank focused on how organizations [...]
Author’s note: Stephen Few is a bastion of data visualization excellence. I encourage all of my Tableau clients and students to purchase his books, read his blogs, and attend events where he is presenting. I also submitted an entry into the competition (you can read it here). I've been troubled by both the premise and [...]
Thoughts on Standard Business Practices, User Expectations, Tableau’s Server Pricing Model, and Appealing to the Consumer’s Inner Narcissist. In my six-plus years of using Tableau I’ve created hundreds of dashboards and thousands of interactive visualizations. In observing these creations out in the field I noticed something rather disappointing – the vast majority of people for [...]
Overview Here’s something you are welcome to try – have a friend or colleague go to a Tableau Public URL that contains multiple tabs; then see how many people realize that there is in fact more than one view / dashboard available for him/her to explore. I’ve created hundreds of dashboards with multiple tabs and [...]
Note: While the information in this blog is useful,  I've discovered some better ways to perform intra-question analysis; I just haven't blogged about them yet.  Feel free to nag me. January 3, 2018 update. I've written a two-part post that explores better ways to conduct intra-question analysis. Please see this post. Overview So, I thought I [...]
So, as anyone who has either taken a Tableau class with me or has read my blog posts knows, I go ballistic when I see anyone use a red/green divergent color palette. So, it's great to see people using Tableau's color-blind palette, but we need to get something straight: Dark Blue == Good, Lots Dark [...]
