Creating Data Stories with Tableau Public


Book Description

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.




Storytelling with Data


Book Description

Don't simply show your data—tell a story with it! Storytelling with Data teaches you the fundamentals of data visualization and how to communicate effectively with data. You'll discover the power of storytelling and the way to make data a pivotal point in your story. The lessons in this illuminative text are grounded in theory, but made accessible through numerous real-world examples—ready for immediate application to your next graph or presentation. Storytelling is not an inherent skill, especially when it comes to data visualization, and the tools at our disposal don't make it any easier. This book demonstrates how to go beyond conventional tools to reach the root of your data, and how to use your data to create an engaging, informative, compelling story. Specifically, you'll learn how to: Understand the importance of context and audience Determine the appropriate type of graph for your situation Recognize and eliminate the clutter clouding your information Direct your audience's attention to the most important parts of your data Think like a designer and utilize concepts of design in data visualization Leverage the power of storytelling to help your message resonate with your audience Together, the lessons in this book will help you turn your data into high impact visual stories that stick with your audience. Rid your world of ineffective graphs, one exploding 3D pie chart at a time. There is a story in your data—Storytelling with Data will give you the skills and power to tell it!




#MakeoverMonday


Book Description

Explore different perspectives and approaches to create more effective visualizations #MakeoverMonday offers inspiration and a giant dose of perspective for those who communicate data. Originally a small project in the data visualization community, #MakeoverMonday features a weekly chart or graph and a dataset that community members reimagine in order to make it more effective. The results have been astounding; hundreds of people have contributed thousands of makeovers, perfectly illustrating the highly variable nature of data visualization. Different takes on the same data showed a wide variation of theme, focus, content, and design, with side-by-side comparisons throwing more- and less-effective techniques into sharp relief. This book is an extension of that project, featuring a variety of makeovers that showcase various approaches to data communication and a focus on the analytical, design and storytelling skills that have been developed through #MakeoverMonday. Paging through the makeovers ignites immediate inspiration for your own work, provides insight into different perspectives, and highlights the techniques that truly make an impact. Explore the many approaches to visual data communication Think beyond the data and consider audience, stakeholders, and message Design your graphs to be intuitive and more communicative Assess the impact of layout, color, font, chart type, and other design choices Creating visual representation of complex datasets is tricky. There’s the mandate to include all relevant data in a clean, readable format that best illustrates what the data is saying—but there is also the designer’s impetus to showcase a command of the complexity and create multidimensional visualizations that “look cool.” #MakeoverMonday shows you the many ways to walk the line between simple reporting and design artistry to create exactly the visualization the situation requires.




Visual Data Storytelling with Tableau


Book Description

Tell Insightful, Actionable Business Stories with Tableau, the World’s Leading Data Visualization Tool! Visual Data Storytelling with Tableau brings together knowledge, context, and hands-on skills for telling powerful, actionable data stories with Tableau. This full-color guide shows how to organize data and structure analysis with storytelling in mind, embrace exploration and visual discovery, and articulate findings with rich data, carefully curated visualizations, and skillfully crafted narrative. You don’t need any visualization experience. Each chapter illuminates key aspects of design practice and data visualization, and guides you step-by-step through applying them in Tableau. Through realistic examples and classroom-tested exercises, Professor Lindy Ryan helps you use Tableau to analyze data, visualize it, and help people connect more intuitively and emotionally with it. Whether you’re an analyst, executive, student, instructor, or journalist, you won’t just master the tools: you’ll learn to craft data stories that make an immediate impact--and inspire action. Learn how to: • Craft more powerful stories by blending data science, genre, and visual design • Ask the right questions upfront to plan data collection and analysis • Build storyboards and choose charts based on your message and audience • Direct audience attention to the points that matter most • Showcase your data stories in high-impact presentations • Integrate Tableau storytelling throughout your business communication • Explore case studies that show what to do--and what not to do • Discover visualization best practices, tricks, and hacks you can use with any tool • Includes coverage up through Tableau 10




Practical Tableau


Book Description

Whether you have some experience with Tableau software or are just getting started, this manual goes beyond the basics to help you build compelling, interactive data visualization applications. Author Ryan Sleeper, one of the worldâ??s most qualified Tableau consultants, complements his web posts and instructional videos with this guide to give you a firm understanding of how to use Tableau to find valuable insights in data. Over five sections, Sleeperâ??recognized as a Tableau Zen Master, Tableau Public Visualization of the Year author, and Tableau Iron Viz Championâ??provides visualization tips, tutorials, and strategies to help you avoid the pitfalls and take your Tableau knowledge to the next level. Practical Tableau sections include: Fundamentals: get started with Tableau from the beginning Chart types: use step-by-step tutorials to build a variety of charts in Tableau Tips and tricks: learn innovative uses of parameters, color theory, how to make your Tableau workbooks run efficiently, and more Framework: explore the INSIGHT framework, a proprietary process for building Tableau dashboards Storytelling: learn tangible tactics for storytelling with data, including specific and actionable tips you can implement immediately




The Big Book of Dashboards


Book Description

The definitive reference book with real-world solutions you won't find anywhere else The Big Book of Dashboards presents a comprehensive reference for those tasked with building or overseeing the development of business dashboards. Comprising dozens of examples that address different industries and departments (healthcare, transportation, finance, human resources, marketing, customer service, sports, etc.) and different platforms (print, desktop, tablet, smartphone, and conference room display) The Big Book of Dashboards is the only book that matches great dashboards with real-world business scenarios. By organizing the book based on these scenarios and offering practical and effective visualization examples, The Big Book of Dashboards will be the trusted resource that you open when you need to build an effective business dashboard. In addition to the scenarios there's an entire section of the book that is devoted to addressing many practical and psychological factors you will encounter in your work. It's great to have theory and evidenced-based research at your disposal, but what will you do when somebody asks you to make your dashboard 'cooler' by adding packed bubbles and donut charts? The expert authors have a combined 30-plus years of hands-on experience helping people in hundreds of organizations build effective visualizations. They have fought many 'best practices' battles and having endured bring an uncommon empathy to help you, the reader of this book, survive and thrive in the data visualization world. A well-designed dashboard can point out risks, opportunities, and more; but common challenges and misconceptions can make your dashboard useless at best, and misleading at worst. The Big Book of Dashboards gives you the tools, guidance, and models you need to produce great dashboards that inform, enlighten, and engage.




Tableau Desktop Cookbook


Book Description

Whether you're a beginner just learning how to create data visualizations or a Jedi who's already used Tableau for years, this cookbook has a recipe for everyone. Author Lorna Brown provides more than 100 practical recipes to enhance the way you build Tableau dashboards--and helps you understand your data through the power of Tableau Desktop's interactive datavisualizations. With this cookbook, Tableau beginners will learn hands-on how this unique self-serve tool works, while experienced users will find this book to be an ideal reference guide on how to employ specific techniques. It also links you to online resources and community features, such as Tableau Tip Tuesday and Workout Wednesday. By the time you reach the end, you'll be a competent user of Tableau Desktop. You'll learn how to: Build both basic and complex data visualizations with Tableau Desktop Gain hands-on experience with Tableau's latest features, including set and parameter actions Create interactive dashboards to support business questions Improve your analytical skills to enhance the visualizations you've already created Learn data visualization skills and best practices to help you and your organization




Hands-On Data Visualization


Book Description

Tell your story and show it with data, using free and easy-to-learn tools on the web. This introductory book teaches you how to design interactive charts and customized maps for your website, beginning with simple drag-and-drop tools such as Google Sheets, Datawrapper, and Tableau Public. You'll also gradually learn how to edit open source code templates like Chart.js, Highcharts, and Leaflet on GitHub. Hands-On Data Visualization for All takes you step-by-step through tutorials, real-world examples, and online resources. This hands-on resource is ideal for students, nonprofit organizations, small business owners, local governments, journalists, academics, and anyone who wants to take data out of spreadsheets and turn it into lively interactive stories. No coding experience is required. Build interactive charts and maps and embed them in your website Understand the principles for designing effective charts and maps Learn key data visualization concepts to help you choose the right tools Convert and transform tabular and spatial data to tell your data story Edit and host Chart.js, Highcharts, and Leaflet map code templates on GitHub Learn how to detect bias in charts and maps produced by others




Learning Tableau


Book Description

If you want to understand your data using data visualization and don't know where to start, then this is the book for you. Whether you are a beginner or have years of experience, this book will help you to quickly acquire the skills and techniques used to discover, analyze, and communicate data visually. Some familiarity with databases and data structures is helpful, but not required.




Tableau For Dummies


Book Description

Make your data work for you! Tableau For Dummies brings order to the chaotic world of data. Understanding your data and organizing it into formats and visualizations that make sense to you are crucial to making a real impact on your business with the information that's already at your fingertips. This easy-to-use reference explores the user interface, and guides you through the process of connecting your data sources to the software. Additionally, this approachable, yet comprehensive text shows you how to use graphs, charts, and other images to bring visual interest to your data, how to create dashboards from multiple data sources, and how to export the visualizations that you have developed into multiple formats that translate into positive change for your business. The mission of Tableau Software is to grant you access to data that, when put into action, will help you build your company. Learning to use the data available to you helps you make informed, grounded business decisions that can spell success for your company. Navigate the user interface to efficiently access the features you need Connect to various spreadsheets, databases, and other data sources to create a multi-dimensional snapshot of your business Develop visualizations with easy to use drag and drop features Start building your data with templates and sample workbooks to spark your creativity and help you organize your information Tableau For Dummies is a step-by-step resource that helps you make sense of the data landscape—and put your data to work in support of your business.