A Tableau Customer Conference is always fantastic. We always tell our customers that if they can spare the time and budget then they’ve got to go. How good are they? They’re so good this will be my fifth Tableau conference in a row! This year promises to be as great as ever with customer stories [...]
We’ve been incredibly lucky to have had Andy Cotgreave blogging on our site for the last year and so it was bittersweet news when Andy told us that he was moving to Tableau. We were all, of course, delighted for both Andy and Tableau but it did mean that Andy would not be able to [...]
It’s my last week at Oxford University and as a Data Studio blogger. From next week, I cross the divide and become a Tableau employee. So far, my Tableau journey has been a blast, and I wanted to look back at my life as a Tableau customer. I’ve been at Oxford 4 years, and looking [...]
This weekend saw the Croydon Cyclone disc golf tournament. It was the biggest UK tour event for a long time, and the Croydon club created a tough course. Here’s the analysis of each hole’s results. As you can see, it was a tough event. Click on the holes in the upper chart to see score [...]
Over on the forum, Jeremy asked about making trellis charts. For more info on trellis/panel charts, John Peltier has a great article about them. Consider a case where you want to visualise two measures (eg sales and time) for a Dimension with many members, such as State. There’s no pretty way to do this in [...]
Tableau’s sample files wouldn’t look so good if they weren’t well designed Alistair Knock posted a great question by Moose Peterson on Google+ about feedback on user photographs on the web:why do most people just make anodyne comments along the lines of “Nice!” when they probably have some constructive criticism they are holding back? This [...]
Back in November, JISC InfoNet published the results of its survey of BI solutions in Higher- and Further- education. A snaphot is below. Being someone who is passionate about good quality visualisations, I rattled off a couple of less than complimentary tweets about this. Here’s one: JISC got in touch with me privately and they [...]
I have a new job, starting in late September. It’s with a technology startup you may just have heard of. Yes, I am moving to Tableau. I’m very excited and in many ways it’s the least surprising job move ever. I’ve been amazed by the product since first installing v3.1 * and have always harboured [...]
Jerome Cukier has put together a great viz for the current Tableau vizualisation contest. Here it is, with my thoughts below (his original blog post and commentary are here): Real-estate transactions in ManhattanResidential buildings, 2003-present Powered by Tableau The dashboard is excellent. It is technically superb and the story is clear. Would I change anything? [...]
The power of social networking has struck again. Next are seeking their next Top Model. Computer Science graduate Roland Bunce is the runaway favourite so far. I took the data of the top five entrants and created this viz to emphasize how big a lead he’s got. Go Roland! More details at the Guardian. The [...]
Three years ago I had a debate with someone about why they didn’t cycle to work in Oxford. “Because it’s too wet,” was their main excuse. Being a keen cyclist, I knew that it didn’t really rain that much, and even on days it rained, it was rarely at the time one commutes to work. [...]
Thanks for visiting the blog – if you are visiting here as a result of my Tableau European Customer Conference session, welcome along. The best way to keep up to date with new posts is via my twitter feed (@acotgreave). My session was all about tooltips, and ways you can use them to enhance your [...]
You may have read my post on the bar-chart tooltip, or seen it on the Tableau Knowledge Base. That was always something I was proud of. When Tableau released v6, and with it Table Calculations, I suspected there was a way to extend it. Once I had my Tableau European Conference tooltip session approved, I [...]
There has been much interesting debate about David McCandless’ Information Is Beautiful this week, initiated by a well written critical piece by Stephen Few. I am pleased he has challenged the orthodox view that McCandless is the answer to the data visualisation industry’s problems. On both FlowingData and Stephen’s own blog, there is debate about [...]
Unlike any other tool I’ve used before, Tableau invites exploration. One can start with a blank canvas and end up who knows where. That’s what makes Tableau fun to use. However strange that word looks when used in a work context, it’s true. I had a challenge. I needed to produce a handout that compared [...]
Earlier today, I posted on the Tableau Forum, suggesting it would be great if Tableau did 3D pie charts. Well, I didn’t think it would be possible, but using some data pre-processing techniques, and hacking the preferences.tps, I’ve worked out a way of doing 3d pie charts in Tableau: Forum posts Powered by Tableau I [...]
Ujval Gandhi commented on my post about dual axis formatting. He asked if you could use dual axes/parameters to choose between showing a bar and a line chart. Turns out that, yes, you can: It’s quite a simple trick: Choose to show a bar or line chart Powered by Tableau 1. Create a Boolean parameter. [...]
You’ve built a nice chart using synchronised dual axes (maybe it’s a lollipop chart – as described in my previous posts!). It looks great, but you’re just left with a niggling little design flaw: those dual axis sure take up a lot of space, at the top and the bottom of your viz: What can [...]
In my original Lollipop Chart post, Austin Dahl commented that lollipops are a way of adding page history to a bar-type display. When I tried this in v6.0.2 it crashed my workbook. However, I’ve upgraded to 6.0.5 and it now works. At least, it works in that it doesn’t crash Tableau. Below is a snapshot [...]
In my previous post, I explained how I stumbled across the lollipop chart as a way of displaying data when the values are all very high. This post reveals how I did it. Those of you who are savvy with the new features in v6 will probably have immediately guessed it was using dual axes. [...]
Here’s the problem: I am visualising satisfaction rates over multiple dimensions. In almost all cases, satisfaction rates are high (between 70% and 100%). I want a visualisation that allows comparison over multiple dimensions that is also nice on the eye. Below is the result: a lollipop chart. Although I stumbled across this design by trial [...]
I gave a presentation at Oxford Geek Night #20 on Feb 9th. If you were there and have visited the blog because of that session, welcome and thanks for having a look around. If you are new to the blog, you can follow me on twitter (@acotgreave) to keep up with Tableau and Data Viz [...]
I couldn’t resist adding one more post in my Joy of Six series. Even though v6 has been with us a while , I’m still discovering how to use its great new features. In particular, calculated fields are a huge new addition that require a certain amount of head scratching before it all becomes clear. [...]
Flowing Data have announced a new Visualise This challenge. Here’s my response: The original chartThis is the original chart, slightly tweaked to make it less busy Powered by Tableau You will notice that it is similar to the original. Why? As Nathan says in the challenge, the chart isn’t too bad. I chose to clear [...]
Transport for London released data on the first 1.4 million journeys of the Boris Bikes Barclays Cycle Hire Scheme. For those who don’t know, it’s a fantastic scheme: turn up, hire bike, and ride around London. I think it’s one of the greatest transport innovations ever, and have had a hoot riding around London on [...]
Here’s hoping you all have a wonderful Christmas. What better way to celebrate than with a Tableau Christmas card: Happy christmas from everyone at The Data Studio! Powered by Tableau For those who really need to know how this was made…. well, I’m just about to go for our office Christmas lunch. I feel it [...]
As soon as I got my hands on Tableau v6, the first thing that came to mind was Gapminder. Those new shiny features meant it would be possible to recreate the amazing Trendalyzer software in Tableau. Here’s how I did: Wealth and health of nations: a Gapminder tribute Powered by Tableau To do the viz, [...]
December 4th was International Open Data Hackathon. Groups around the world got together to see what they could do with open data: scrape, viz, reimagine, play, tinker. Anything you could imagine, using any kind of open data. Around 30 people gathered at the offices of White October for the Oxford event. I went along with [...]
At the recent UK Tableau User Group, Mel Stephenson made a great set of points: Screen real estate is scarce. Filters take up lots of space Filters don’t show any information. How about making worksheets that perform two functions: work as a filter and convery information? Get that right, and you have just increased the [...]
First off, let me say that I do not take credit for the contents of this post. Credit is due to Joe Mako and Richard Leeke who responded to my questions on the Tableau Forum. This is a good time to say that if you aren’t using the forum yet, get over there to ask [...]
Flowing data posted nice and clear instructions on how to make bubble charts using R. It’s a great post, and I thought it would be a good thing to show how to create the same chart in Tableau. Readers can compare and contrast the ease of each. Let me know your thoughts in the comments [...]
This is the third post on simple tricks that are available in version 6. This one represents a common request we get. The client says “I want to compare the performance of x against everyone else.” What is x? Well, it could be Customers, Departments, Countries, anything. Parameters once again make this easy: Let the [...]
You may have seen my response to an Information is Beautiful post. Here’s the viz I used in that post: Wikipedia banner testsThe effectiveness of donation appeals on Wikipedia Powered by Tableau This uses sheet tabs to create an “About this viz” tab. It is good practise to credit data sources and date your vizualisation. [...]
One can always expect visually attractive stuff from David McCandless on his Information is Beautiful blog. Sometimes though, the visual displays potentially confuse viewers. Today’s great post on Wikipedia Banner Tests is an example. Representing the size of donations using a square is pretty, for sure. However, we tend to perceive the relationship of one [...]
Over on the forum, Hadbar asked a question about Error Bars. He asked the question back in the days of version 5, when it wasn’t straightforward to make a pleasant error bar. However, now we have the Joy of Six, we can use the new dual axis/multiple mark features to create some visually appealing error [...]
Today is the Joy of Six day. Tableau v6 is incredible, and I’ve been lucky to have had my hands on the beta versions for a while. The Tableau site itself is a great resource for learning about the amazing new features and how to use them. I wanted to do a series of posts [...]
Those of you who follow me on twitter (@acotgreave) will probably know that most Fridays I get involved in the rathe excellent FridayMix. This week it reaches its first birthday. I downloaded the full list of all 3500+ tracks that have appeared on a FridayMix and produced this viz of the most popular artists. #FridayMix [...]
Flowing Data laid down the challenge to visual the sexual health and behaviour dataset from Indiana University. Seemed like an interesting topic…. Here’s my attempt: National survey of sexual health and behaviour Powered by Tableau
Flowing Data have announce a new Visualise This exercise. The data on the site is only available as an image. For those who want an XLS of the data, here it is! Sexual health survey
London 2012 published the Olympic ticket prices today. There’s lots of good value seats to be had. I took the data from the London 2012 site and built this viz that you can use to find out how much your favourite sport will cost you: Note: this viz does not include the Opening or Closing [...]
The government today published details of which quangos they are going to abolish. It’s pretty ruthless. Here’s an interactive viz using data from the Guardian Data Blog: Bonfire of the quangos Powered by Tableau Click on the Share button above to embed the viz in your own blog/webpage
I see that Interflora is suing M&S over the latter’s keyword piggy-back tactic. I notice that this is also happening in the Fast Analytics world:
Warning! This post discusses disc golf. If you’ve not heard of it, just imagine I’m referring to “normal” golf. The US Disc Golf Championships, the world’s toughest, and richest event is happening this week. The leaderboard’s on the PDGA.com, and on the USDGC sites are ok, but don’t reveal very much. Here’s my leaderboards, made [...]
There’s a chart doing the rounds that shows who is suing whom in the telecoms industries (eg at the Guardian). David McCandelish has improved it nicely here, and asked the question of whether companies who’s revenue is going down are more litigious than those on the rise. Well, I took his data from here and [...]
[Update: in theory, v6.1.1 has made it easier to create the bars described in this post by using REPLACE() and SPACE(). However, at time of writing (19 Aug 2011) there is a problem: while the solution works fine in Tableau Desktop, the view won't display on Tableau Public - have a look at the "Using [...]
I played in the Croydon Cyclone last weekend, a part of the British Disc Golf Association national tour. One hole’s layout was controversial. It’s short, a distance that almost any player can reach from the tee. The designers spiced things up by surrounding the basket and most of the fairway with Out-of-Bounds areas that incurred [...]
The XX won the Mercury Prize last night. It’s a great album. I personally would have preferred Wild Beasts or the Villagers, but they were a little “out there” for a thinly-veiled sales generator. You can see my Mercury Prize Tableau viz below (or click here for a full screen version). I also created a [...]
This is the second post about tooltips. In this post, I will describe a technique to add conditional formatting, of a sort, to your viz. This isn’t a natively supported feature in Tableau (although it would be lovely if it was!), so you have to do a bit of extra work to do it. I’ve [...]
Tooltips are the missing link between a mark and its underlying data. They provide a valuable opportunity to explain more about the chart without requiring the user to examine the underlying data. The motivation for these posts was seeing so many vizzes on great charts on Tableau Public being let down by the publisher leaving [...]
By default, Tableau won’t label a bar. The axis is enough for viewers. However, a lot of our users say to us, “We like the bar, but we want to see the numbers as well“. Rather than reproduce a bar chart as a table, labelling the bars is the obvious way to go. Tableau provides [...]
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