Book Image

Tableau Cookbook - Recipes for Data Visualization

By : Shweta Sankhe-Savale
Book Image

Tableau Cookbook - Recipes for Data Visualization

By: Shweta Sankhe-Savale

Overview of this book

Data is everywhere and everything is data! Visualization of data allows us to bring out the underlying trends and patterns inherent in the data and gain insights that enable faster and smarter decision making. Tableau is one of the fastest growing and industry leading Business Intelligence platforms that empowers business users to easily visualize their data and discover insights at the speed of thought. Tableau is a self-service BI platform designed to make data visualization and analysis as intuitive as possible. Creating visualizations with simple drag-and-drop, you can be up and running on Tableau in no time. Starting from the fundamentals such as getting familiarized with Tableau Desktop, connecting to common data sources and building standard charts; you will walk through the nitty gritty of Tableau such as creating dynamic analytics with parameters, blended data sources, and advanced calculations. You will also learn to group members into higher levels, sort the data in a specific order & filter out the unnecessary information. You will then create calculations in Tableau & understand the flexibility & power they have and go on to building story-boards and share your insights with others. Whether you are just getting started or whether you need a quick reference on a “how-to” question, This book is the perfect companion for you
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Tableau Cookbook – Recipes for Data Visualization
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface
Index

Understanding and using reference lines – the bullet chart


Reference lines are typically used for providing a visual comparison against benchmark values. Imagine having a vertical bar chart showing product sales. Further, imagine that these products have a budget value that they are supposed to achieve. Now, if we are able to show a small line which represents the budget thresholds for each of the products, then we can provide a quick visual display to see which products are not exceeding target and which products are exceeding the target. The chart type which is typically used to do a target versus actual comparison is called a bullet chart.

Bullet charts were developed by Stephen Few. A bullet chart is an extension of the regular bar chart, where the length or height of the bar represents the actual values and the horizontal or vertical reference line represents the target.

Getting ready

Let us take a look at bullet charts in detail in the following recipe:

For this recipe we will use the...