Creating Data Stories with Tableau Public

Ashley Ohmann, Matt Floyd

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781849694766
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencia de la computación
• Subtopic: Visualización de datos

Illustrate your data in a more interactive and interesting way using Tableau Public

About This Book

• Learn the basics of creating visualizations with Tableau using this concise reference book
• Understand how to join and aggregate your data sources using Tableau
• It is a step by step guide that uses examples to help you understand the key concepts and feature of Tableau Public

Who This Book Is For

This book is targeted at investigative journalists and bloggers with an interest in making rich and interactive data visualizations. Intermediate Tableau Public users and organizations can also use this book as a reference guide and teaching aid. Members of the media team, such as data specialists, web developers, editors, producers, and managers can also benefit from an understanding of the structure and challenges of writing an interactive and interesting data visualization using Tableau Public.

What You Will Learn

• Connect to various data sources and understand what data is appropriate for Tableau Public
• Understand chart types and when to use specific chart types with different types of data
• Join and aggregate data for use in Tableau Public data stories
• Discover features of Tableau Public, from basic to advanced
• Involve calculations in Tableau Public
• Build geographic maps to bring context to data
• Create dashboards from one or more separate data visualizations
• Create filters and actions to allow greater interactivity to Tableau Public visualizations and dashboards
• Publish and embed Tableau visualizations and dashboards in articles

In Detail

Tableau Public is a very useful tool in anyone's data reporting toolbox that allows authors to add an interactive data element to any article. It allows investigative journalists and bloggers to tell a "data story", allowing others to explore your data visualization. The relative ease of Tableau Public visualization creation allows data stories to be developed rapidly. It allows readers to explore data associations in multiple-sourced public data, and uses state-of-the-art dashboard and chart graphics to immerse the users in an interactive experience.

This book offers investigative journalists, bloggers, and other data story tellers a rich discussion of visualization creation topics, features, and functions. This book allows data story tellers to quickly gain confidence in understanding and expanding their visualization-creation knowledge, and allows them to quickly create interesting, interactive data visualizations to bring a richness and vibrancy to complex articles.

The book takes you from basic concepts in visualization creation, like connecting to data sources, cleansing data, chart types, common functions, map creation, and publishing to the Web, to more advanced functions.

It is a great overview and reference guide for beginner to intermediate Tableau Public data story tellers, and covers creation of Tableau Public visualizations of varying complexities.

Style and approach

This book is a crisp, systematic, and tutorial-styled guide to building interactive Tableau visualizations.

Creating Data Stories with Tableau Public

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Table of Contents

Creating Data Stories with Tableau Public

Credits

About the Author

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Reviewer

www.PacktPub.com

Support files, eBooks, discount offers, and more

Why subscribe?

Free access for Packt account holders

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Downloading the color images of this book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Getting Started with Tableau Public

A Tableau Public overview

Telling your story with Tableau Public

Installing Tableau Public

Exploring Tableau Public

Connecting to data

Opening files and creating your profile

Discover

Exploring the visualizations of other authors

Summary

2. Tableau Public Interface Features

Touring the Tableau Public user interface

The side bar

The Data pane

Visual cues

The Analytics pane

Menus and toolbars

Canvas and Column/Row shelves

Using the Columns and Rows shelves

Using the Marks card

The Filters and Pages shelves

The workspace control tabs of Tableau Public

The Show Me tool

Summary

3. Connecting to Data

Public data

Tables and databases

The data sources that Tableau Public connects to

The databases, tables, dimensions, facts, field formats and conventions

Connecting to the data in Tableau Public

The data source user interface

Using the data interpreter

Pivoting data

Filtering data sources

Joining tables

Connecting to web-based data sources

Summary

4. Visualization – Tips and Types

An overview of the development lifecycle

Ten visualization tips

The perception of visual clues

Using the Show Me tool to create charts

Answering questions using Show Me chart types

About dimensions and measures

Continuous and discrete dimensions and measures

Selecting aggregation types for measures

Swapping and sorting

Types of visualization

Line graphs

Continuous versus discrete date-time elements

Tables

Bar charts

Geographic maps

Scatter plots

Pie charts

Using groups and sets

Summary

5. Calculations

Creating calculated fields

Editing calculated fields

Types of calculations

The number functions

The date functions

Type conversions

The string functions

The aggregate functions

The logic functions

Blending data sources

Summary

6. Level of Detail and Table Calculations

About data sources

Creating quick table calculations

Changing over time

Compute using

Moving average

Editing table calculations

Manually editing table calculations

Ranking

Window versus running functions

A note on addressing

The level of detail calculations

A FIXED LOD calculation

The INCLUDE and nested LOD calculations

Summary

7. Dashboard Design and Styling

The dashboard design process

Best practices for dashboard design

Creating a dashboard

The dashboard tab interface

Layout objects

Setting the size of dashboard elements

Sizing the dashboard

Building a dashboard

Summary

8. Filters and Actions

Adding and using Filters

Adding Filters to worksheets

Adding Quick Filters to a dashboard

Moving the Quick Filter

Filtering across Data sources with parameters

Using parameters as Filters

Modifying titles

Filtering across multiple Data sources with parameters

Actions

URL actions

Summary

9. Publishing Your Work

Saving your work and logging in to Tableau Public

Opening work from the Cloud

Managing your profile

Viewing your work online

Managing workbook details

Summary

Index

Creating Data Stories with Tableau Public

Copyright © 2015 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the authors, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: November 2015

Production reference: 1251115

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-84969-476-6

www.packtpub.com

Credits

Authors

Ashley Ohmann

Matt Floyd

Reviewer

Joshua N. Milligan

Acquisition Editor

Meeta Rajani

Content Development Editor

Pooja Mhapsekar

Technical Editor

Vishal Mewada

Copy Editor

Vedangi Narvekar

Project Coordinator

Nidhi Joshi

Proofreader

Safis Editing

Indexer

Hemangini Bari

Graphics

Kirk D'Penha

Production Coordinator

Melwyn Dsa

Cover Work

Melwyn Dsa

About the Author

Ashley Ohmann started her career in technology as a Flash and HTML developer at the Emory University School of Medicine while studying Classics as an undergraduate at Emory University. After learning how to write SQL to help create a fraud detection system for a client, she pursued information management and data analytics as a vocation. While working for a multinational manufacturing company, she was asked to evaluate Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server; consequently, her team became one of the first to implement the suite of tools for their enterprise.

Ashley's career with Tableau's products has included work as a consultant, trainer, and a professional services practice director. She is a frequent contributor to the San Francisco and Phoenix Tableau User Groups.

A native of Highlands, NC and Atlanta, GA, Ashley is a proud alumna of Rabun Gap –...

Table of contents

• Creating Data Stories with Tableau Public