Book Image

The Tableau Workshop

By : Sumit Gupta, Sylvester Pinto, Shweta Sankhe-Savale, JC Gillet, Kenneth Michael Cherven
Book Image

The Tableau Workshop

By: Sumit Gupta, Sylvester Pinto, Shweta Sankhe-Savale, JC Gillet, Kenneth Michael Cherven

Overview of this book

Learning Tableau has never been easier, thanks to this practical introduction to storytelling with data. The Tableau Workshop breaks down the analytical process into five steps: data preparation, data exploration, data analysis, interactivity, and distribution of dashboards. Each stage is addressed with a clear walkthrough of the key tools and techniques you'll need, as well as engaging real-world examples, meaningful data, and practical exercises to give you valuable hands-on experience. As you work through the book, you'll learn Tableau step by step, studying how to clean, shape, and combine data, as well as how to choose the most suitable charts for any given scenario. You'll load data from various sources and formats, perform data engineering to create new data that delivers deeper insights, and create interactive dashboards that engage end-users. All concepts are introduced with clear, simple explanations and demonstrated through realistic example scenarios. You'll simulate real-world data science projects with use cases such as traffic violations, urban populations, coffee store sales, and air travel delays. By the end of this Tableau book, you'll have the skills and knowledge to confidently present analytical results and make data-driven decisions.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)
Preface

Exploring Composition Snapshots – Pie Charts

Although pie charts are quite often used, in the author's personal experience and the opinion of industry leaders in the field of data visualization, they are best avoided in reports/dashboards because it gets difficult to draw insights accurately from them. Pie charts often confuse even the best in the business. Notice how it is easy to trick people with the following pie chart (tricking people is not what we as data analysts/visualizers are supposed to do):

Figure 4.39: Sample pie chart

The goal of the pie chart is to display market penetration levels for brands A, B, and C. A simple visual inspection may cause one to believe that Brand A and C have equal market penetration, but in reality the difference between them could be several millions of dollars due to a couple of percentage points' difference. Therefore, it is recommended not to use pie charts. That said, if there is no way to avoid using...