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

Chapter 10. Visualization Best Practices and Dashboard Design

My first solo Tableau training engagement was in Manhattan. At that time, my understanding of the tool was okay but my understanding of data visualization theory was not. One of the students in that class was quite well-versed in data visualization theory and actually knew Edward Tufte (the godfather of data visualization) personally. It wasn't long before he found me out! I stumbled along as best as I could but it was obvious that I had a huge hole in my knowledge that needed to be filled. Perhaps I received more of an education from the student than he did from me!

Since that fateful week in Manhattan, I've read Edward Tufte, Stephen Few, and other thought leaders in the data visualization space. This knowledge has been very fruitful. For instance, quite recently, a colleague told me that one of his clients thought a particular dashboard had too many bar charts and he wanted some variation. I shared the following two quotes:

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