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 how to create and use trend lines


Trend lines are typically used to observe the relationship or correlation between two variables, where the shape of the trend line indicates the type of the relationship between the variables; for example, how is our profit value related to our marketing expenses, or how is our profit value related to the discounts that we are offering?

Further, trend lines can also be used to indicate the general pattern or direction of time series data; for example, to plot the change in variables such as sales, profit or cost over a period of time. While line charts, when used to show such changes, may show fluctuations in values over a period of time, a trend line plotted in addition to this line chart would also help us understand the general direction of the change.

At times, trend lines can also be used for basic forecasting, based on an extrapolation of the trend line.

Let us go through the following recipe to see how to generate a trend line.

Getting ready...