Book Image

Mastering Tableau

By : David Baldwin
Book Image

Mastering Tableau

By: David Baldwin

Overview of this book

Tableau has emerged as one of the most popular Business Intelligence solutions in recent times, thanks to its powerful and interactive data visualization capabilities. This book will empower you to become a master in Tableau by exploiting the many new features introduced in Tableau 10.0. You will embark on this exciting journey by getting to know the valuable methods of utilizing advanced calculations to solve complex problems. These techniques include creative use of different types of calculations such as row-level, aggregate-level, and more. You will discover how almost any data visualization challenge can be met in Tableau by getting a proper understanding of the tool’s inner workings and creatively exploring possibilities. You’ll be armed with an arsenal of advanced chart types and techniques to enable you to efficiently and engagingly present information to a variety of audiences through the use of clear, efficient, and engaging dashboards. Explanations and examples of efficient and inefficient visualization techniques, well-designed and poorly designed dashboards, and compromise options when Tableau consumers will not embrace data visualization will build on your understanding of Tableau and how to use it efficiently. By the end of the book, you will be equipped with all the information you need to create effective dashboards and data visualization solutions using Tableau.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Mastering Tableau
Credits
About the Author
www.Packtpub.com
Preface

Data structures


The right data structure is not easily definable. True, there are ground rules. For instance, tall data is generally better than wide data. A wide dataset with lots of columns can be difficult to work with, whereas the same data structured in a tall format with fewer columns but more rows is usually easier to work with. But this isn't always the case! Some business questions are more easily answered with wide data structures, and that's the crux of the matter. Business questions determine the right data structure. If one structure answers all questions, great! However, your questions may require multiple data structures. The pivot feature in Tableau helps you adjust data structure on the fly, in order to answer different business questions.

Before beginning the exercise, understanding the points in the following information box will be important.

Note

Pivoting in Tableau is limited to Excel, text files, and Google Sheets. Pivot in Tableau is referred to as unpivot in database...