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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Create powerful, effective visualizations to help analyze your data with Tableau 10 by your side
About This Book
- Cook your favorite Tableau 10 business intelligence recipe with the help of this easy-to-follow book
- Build beautiful, interactive dashboards and visualizations in Tableau 10 that help you make informed decisions
- This rich collection of independent recipes cover everything needed to become an advanced Tableau user and get an edge over other Tableau users
Who This Book Is For
This book is targeted to business, data, and analytics professionals who want to build rich interactive visualizations using Tableau. Familiarity with previous versions of Tableau would be helpful, but is not necessary.
What You Will Learn
- Become familiar with the Tableau interface
- Build basic to more advanced charts with step-by-step recipes
- Use filters, calculated fields, parameters, and actions to add interactivity to charts and dashboards
- Prepare and transform data for analysis using Tableau's built-in tools and functions
- Create effective and compelling dashboards and story points
- Leverage Tableau's mapping capabilities to visualize location and shape data
- Integrate analytics and forecasting to enhance data analysis
- Get to know tips and tricks to work more quickly and effectively in Tableau
- Increase your confidence and competence in creating rich, interactive visualizations in Tableau
In Detail
Tableau is a software tool that can speed up data analysis through its rich visualization capabilities, and help uncover insights for better and smarter decision making. This book is for the business, technology, data and analytics professionals who use and analyze data and data-driven approaches to support business operations and strategic initiatives in their organizations.
This book provides easy-to-follow recipes to get the reader up and running with Tableau 10, and covers basic to advanced use cases and scenarios. The book starts with building basic charts in Tableau and moves on to building more complex charts by incorporating different Tableau features and interactivity components. There is an entire chapter dedicated to dashboard techniques and best practices. A number of recipes specifically for geospatial visualization, analytics, and data preparation are also covered.
By the end of this book, you'll have gained confidence and competence to analyze and communicate data and insights more efficiently and effectively by creating compelling interactive charts, dashboards, and stories in Tableau.
Style and approach
This book is a collection of independent recipes that cover a wide range of options for data visualization on offer with Tableau. With the help of the recipes in this book, you can explore Tableau and pick the business intelligence solution that's best suited for your needs.
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Seitenzahl: 303
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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Table of Contents
Tableau 10 Business Intelligence Cookbook
Tableau 10 Business Intelligence Cookbook
Copyright © 2016 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 author, 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 2016
Production reference: 1241116
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
Livery Place
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Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-78646-563-4
www.packtpub.com
Credits
Author
Donabel Santos
Reviewer
Sneha Vijay
Commissioning Editor
Veena Pagare
Acquisition Editor
Vinay Argekar
Content Development Editor
Manthan Raja
Technical Editor
Danish Shaikh
Copy Editor
Safis Editing
Project Coordinator
Nidhi Joshi
Proofreader
Safis Editing
Indexer
Aishwarya Gangawane
Graphics
Disha Haria
Production Coordinator
Arvindkumar Gupta
Cover Work
Arvindkumar Gupta
About the Author
Donabel Santos is a self-confessed data geek. She loves working with data, writing queries and developing reports on her SQL Server databases, and exploring and visualizing data with Tableau.
She is the principal and senior Business Intelligence Architect at QueryWorks Solutions, a Tableau Learning and Alliance partner in Vancouver, BC, Canada providing consulting and training services. She has spent years in consulting and has developed a variety of solutions for clients in different verticals—finance, manufacturing, healthcare, legal, higher education, and local government.
Donabel is a multi-year Microsoft Data Platform MVP (previously known as SQL Server MVP) and has extensive experience in SQL Server in different areas, such as development, administration, data warehouse, reporting (SSRS), tuning, troubleshooting, XML, CLR, integration with ERPs and CRMs using PowerShell, C#, SSIS, and Power BI.
One of Donabel's passions is teaching and sharing her love for data. She is a Tableau Certified Professional and a Tableau Accredited Trainer, delivering Tableau public and on-site client training. She is also the lead instructor for a number of courses at British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT), including Applied Database Administration and Design (ADAD) and Applied Data Analytics (ADA) programs. She teaches SQL Server Administration, Development, Integration (SSIS), Data Warehouse Foundations, and Visual Analytics with Tableau.
Donabel has also authored three other books with Packt Publishing: SQL Server 2012 with PowerShell V3 Cookbook, PowerShell for SQL Server Essentials, and SQL Server 2014 with PowerShell V5 Cookbook. She also contributed a chapter in Manning Publications' PowerShell Deep Dives. Her blog is located at www.sqlbelle.com and her Twitter handle is @sqlbelle.
Acknowledgements
To Riley, you have made Mama and Dada's lives so much more beautiful, so much more meaningful. We are so very thankful and blessed that you came into our lives. We cannot imagine life without you.
More than anything, we want you to be happy. We want you to follow your dreams and be all that you want to be. We want your journey to be beautiful, meaningful, and full of happiness. Mama and Dada will always be by your side, supporting you, loving you, and giving you the best that we can.
We love you forever. You will always be our baby, and we will always be Mama and Dada.
Let me borrow some of the lyrics of your favorite lullaby, for these words reflect what Mama and Dada feel every time we see you, hold you, think of you:
And at last I see the light
And it's like the fog has lifted
And at last I see the light
And it's like the sky is new
And it's warm and real and bright
And the world has somehow shifted
All at once everything looks different
Now that I see you
To Eric, you are my ray of sunshine. I am so blessed to go through this journey with you. Now we have a little one to share our crazy adventures with, and I am looking forward to each one of them. I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times… In life after life, in age after age, forever.—Rabindranath Tagore
To Papa and Mama, I am forever grateful for everything that you've done and everything that you've sacrificed to give us a better life. I love you both very, very much. To JR and RR, no matter what happens, you will always be my baby brothers, and I will always be your big sis, and I will always be here for you.
To my nieces and nephews—Chiyo, Jayden, Kristina, Tim, and Evan—now that the book is done, Tita/Agim has more time to play! Let's go!
To my in-laws, I am very thankful to be part of your families.
To my BCIT family—Kevin Cudihee, Elsie Au, Joanne Atha, Vaani Nadhan, Cynthia van Ginkel, Charlie Blattler, Bob Langelaan, Paul Mills—thank you. My special thanks to Kevin Cudihee. Thank you for giving me that first chance to teach at BCIT. More than a decade later, I still love every minute that I teach. And to Elsie Au, for the friendship all these years.
To my UBC family—I am fortunate to work in a great place with great, smart, fun, passionate people who I deeply admire and learn from. To my teammates, co-workers, acquaintances, and friends, especially Joe Xing, Min Zhu, Jason Metcalfe, Tom Yerex, Jing Zhu, George Firican, Shirley Tsui, Lynda Campbell, Cindy Lee, Pat Carew, Stan Tian (our Tableau Server superhero at UBC!), Ana Maria Hobrough, and to my truly wonderful director and mentor, Pradeep Nair: it is a privilege to work with all of you.
To the Packt team, to Vinay Argekar for that e-mail asking if I was interested in authoring a Tableau book, and to Siddhesh Salvi and Manthan Raja, for really supporting me throughout the writing process, thank you. A huge thank you to Sneha Vijay as well for reviewing the book and providing a lot of feedback and nuggets of wisdom. Thank you for helping me make this book better.
To the Tableau family, it is so amazing to be part of your community. So many smart and very passionate professionals—so many data geeks!—how could I not feel at home? Thank you to Dan Murray, who was my instructor when I took my first Tableau course and who encouraged me to attend my very first Tableau conference. You've truly helped change the direction of my career. To Jonathan Drummey and Joe Mako—whom I met at that first TC conference (and who probably don't remember me), who have been so gracious and helpful—I didn't even realize they were THE rockstars! To George Gorczynski—Tableau Picasso—whom I have had the privilege of meeting in Vancouver—I owe you for helping me with my course. To Ramon Martinez, whose visualizations set the bar for healthcare (which I showcase a lot, especially for healthcare training). Special thanks to Molly Monsey for giving me the opportunity to teach the Tableau courses for Tableau (I love teaching Tableau!), and to Meagan Corbett for your constant and very timely help on the TFT (Tableau for Teaching) side—my students appreciate your help a lot!
I have learned so much from so many, and this space simply isn't enough. Thank you to everyone who has helped me, taught me, and inspired me.
And most importantly, thank you Lord for all the miracles and blessings in my life.
About the Reviewer
Sneha has a well-rounded consulting background in domains of Data and Analytics with specialization in Tableau. Having over 4 years of experience and successful track record in Consulting, Analytics, Building sophisticated reporting technologies, Data Mining and Tableau visualizations, she provide users with the ability to examine information and uncover hidden trends and anomalies. Currently, Sneha works at Deloitte US Consulting based out of Gurgaon, India. Sneha's passions are spending time with his family, swimming and enjoying music to the fullest.
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Preface
Data viz, visualization, analytics, visual analytics – these are some of the words that you probably hear more often these days. With the explosion of data, we try to find ways to better analyze and represent them to facilitate understanding and communication.
Tableau is a software package that helps explore, visualize, analyze, and make sense of data. It helps us see different kinds of data in a different light. Tableau makes it easy to connect to different kinds of data sets and understand it more and see what kinds of stories we can unearth. It doesn't matter if it's business data, social data, maybe your fitness tracker data, or a playlist—it is fascinating to see and learn something about our business, our health, our own social network, our world in general.
When I was first introduced to Tableau a few years ago, I had no idea what I was getting into. I had the privilege of taking the Tableau in-person class with Tableau Zen Master, Dan Murray, with just a day or two of Tableau exposure. I was blown away by how powerful and fun this product was to use. It didn't feel like work at all!
I was, and still am, used to writing a lot of code to generate queries and reports. It was almost surreal for me to see how I can create beautiful charts with a few drag and drops. I thought Tableau was easy and almost questioned why I had to take the class.
True, Tableau is easy to use. It is a compliment to the company and the product, because as Steve Jobs once said, easy is hard. To make the product easy to use amounts to a lot of hard work from those who made it happen. I also realize that it was an invaluable experience to take the class from Dan Murray because he was able to share his knowledge, experience, and nuggets of wisdom as he talked about Tableau—something not captured in the workbooks.
Being a bookworm (or book hoarder) though, I wished there were books I could get to supplement what I learned from that two-day workshop. At the time, there were no books on Tableau. Working through the exercises was easy while the instructor was there, but as soon as I left the classroom, I remember scratching my head asking how did I do that again?
I found this same conundrum when I started teaching Visual Analytics with Tableau at BCIT's Part Time program. There were no books available. While there were video tutorials and online documentation, I still needed to have more structure in the classroom. I had to write a lot of notes for students so they would have some easy, accessible references on how to do certain things in Tableau.
This cookbook provides step-by-step instructions on how to build different charts and complete different tasks in Tableau. This book aims to provide a foundation in becoming more comfortable with Tableau—to allow you to see and explore other possibilities.
This book is a labor of love. Mixed with technical details, some nuggets of wisdom, some tips and shortcuts, this is the book I wish I had written for me when I first started learning about the product. This is the book I wish I was able to provide students with when they took my first Tableau courses.
Tableau reignited the curiosity in me. I started becoming more aware and started caring a lot more about data round me. I've enjoyed learning Tableau and still enjoy learning and relearning it as new versions come along. I've enjoyed working different kinds of data.
I hope you enjoy this book, and I hope this book helps you with your own Tableau journey. May the force be with you.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Basic Charts, introduces some of the common charts, what is required to create them, which situations they might be most effective in, and how to create them in Tableau. Some of the charts covered in this chapter include bar charts, line charts, scatter plots, heat maps, cross tabs (or text tables), highlight tables, area charts, pie charts, and histograms.
Chapter 2, Advanced Charts, looks at creating additional charts in Tableau. These charts are classified as advanced because they may require additional or more specific steps to create in Tableau compared to the charts in Chapter 1, Basic Charts. This chapter explores shared axis charts, different variations of dual axis charts, bar in bar charts, box and whisker plot charts , bullet charts, and motion charts.
Chapter 3, Interactivity, presents different ways to incorporate interactivity within Tableau charts. Interactivity can keep whoever is consuming your charts more engaged and encourage them to ask questions, answer questions, and ask more questions without breaking the flow of analysis.
Chapter 4, Dashboards and Story Points, covers how to combine different charts in dashboards to provide a consolidated view of the data. Story points are also introduced to provide a more effective way to present information catered to specific audiences and messages.
Chapter 5, Geospatial, showcases Tableau's different mapping support and capabilities. There are recipes to add layers to default maps, create custom territories, use Web Map Service (WMS), and use custom polygons, backgrounds, and geocoding.
Chapter 6, Analytics, explores Tableau's powerful built-in analytics components, which can help provide additional insights into data. This chapter shows how to use constant lines, trend lines, reference lines and bands, cluster analysis, and forecasting. There is also a recipe that integrates Tableau with R to perform linear regression.
Chapter 7, Data Preparation, includes recipes to help clean, transform, or combine data sets to prepare them for data analysis in Tableau. This chapter discusses different data preparation strategies, including using the Data Interpreter, pivot, and schema.ini, as well as comparing operations such as union, join, and blend.
Appendix A, Calculated Fields Primer, presents an introduction to calculated fields in Tableau. Calculated fields are used throughout the book, and this chapter provides a comprehensive introduction to Tableau's calculated fields for anyone who needs a primer.
Appendix B, Resources, offers a list of resources on articles, white papers, websites, data sources for the workbooks, and a list of publicly available data that readers can use to download data sets. This will help readers further the skills they learn from this book by learning more about the best practices for visual analytics and optimization as well as by discovering additional data sets they can use recipes in this book on.
Appendix C, Working with Tableau 10, is a Tableau 10 primer which will provide fundamental working knowledge of Tableau. This chapter also provides some field notes of things to remember when working with Tableau – to help you avoid common gotchas and get you more effective with Tableau right away. Appendix C is an online downloadable resource from Packt Publishing.
What you need for this book
You will need to install Tableau Desktop V10 to follow the recipes in this book. Tableau Desktop can be downloaded from www.tableau.com. The trial version of Tableau offers a fully functional version for 14 days.
If you are an educator or student using Tableau for your course, please check out Tableau for Teaching (TFT). You can find more information at http://www.tableau.com/academic/teaching. This is a great program for educators who want to integrate visual analytics in their courses.
If you are a journalist, Tableau Desktop is available free for you at https://public.tableau.com/en-us/s/blog/2013/06/journalists-now-tableau-desktop-free-you.
You can also use Tableau Public, a free version of the software, to complete many of the recipes. Tableau Public has some limitations, however, which may prevent you from following some of the steps. You can find the comparison and limitations of the different Tableau Desktop versions at https://public.tableau.com/en-us/s/download.
While this book covers Tableau V10, many of the concepts and steps still apply to other versions, barring some minor changes in steps or interface.
Who this book is for
This book is for anyone who wants to explore, analyze, and learn more about their data. From university and college students to business analysts and managers to data and analytics professionals, this is for anyone who wants to build rich interactive visualizations using Tableau.
Familiarity with previous versions of Tableau will be helpful but not necessary. This book comes with a supplementary chapter – Appendix C, Working with Tableau 10, which aims to help the novice navigate their way and get up to speed with Tableau. This supplementary chapter can be downloaded from the following link:
https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/AppendixCWorkingwithTableau10.pdf
Sections
In this book, you will find several headings that appear frequently (Getting ready, How to do it, How it works, There's more, and See also).
To give clear instructions on how to complete a recipe, we use these sections, as follows:
Getting ready
This section tells you what to expect in the recipe, and describes how to set up any software or any preliminary settings required for the recipe.
How to do it…
This section contains the steps required to follow the recipe.
How it works…
This section usually consists of a detailed explanation of what happened in the previous section.
There's more…
This section consists of additional information about the recipe in order to make the reader more knowledgeable about the recipe.
See also
This section provides helpful links to other useful information for the recipe.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "In the following example you can see the function syntax for DATEDIFF.
A block of code is set as follows:
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Once we add another discrete value, for example, Category onto the Columns shelf, we are now breaking SUM(Sales) down to a subtotal for each Category."
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
Reader feedback
Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book—what you liked or disliked. Reader feedback is important for us as it helps us develop titles that you will really get the most out of.
To send us general feedback, simply e-mail <[email protected]>, and mention the book's title in the subject of your message.
If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide at www.packtpub.com/authors.
Customer support
Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.
Downloading the workbook starters
You can download the workbook starters and select sample data sets for this book from your account at http://www.packtpub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files e-mailed directly to you.
You can download the code files by following these steps:
Once the file is downloaded, please make sure that you unzip or extract the folder using the latest version of:
The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Tableau-10-Business-Intelligence-Cookbook. We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!
Errata
Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in the text or the code—we would be grateful if you could report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the Errata Submission Form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded to our website or added to any list of existing errata under the Errata section of that title.
To view the previously submitted errata, go to https://www.packtpub.com/books/content/support and enter the name of the book in the search field. The required information will appear under the Errata section.
Piracy
Piracy of copyrighted material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy.
Please contact us at <[email protected]> with a link to the suspected pirated material.
We appreciate your help in protecting our authors and our ability to bring you valuable content.
Questions
If you have a problem with any aspect of this book, you can contact us at <[email protected]>, and we will do our best to address the problem.
Chapter 1. Basic Charts
In this chapter, we will cover:
Introduction
You are about to embark on a wonderful journey with Tableau! We will classify charts that are easily created in Tableau without much customization as basic. Charts that might be less commonly used, or ones that require more steps and configurations, will be tackled in the next chapter as advanced charts.
In this chapter, we will start with the basic charts that you can create with Tableau. Each recipe will demonstrate the steps required to create different graphs. You will also find nuggets of formatting and annotation options in select recipes that will enhance the charts.
Although the recipes are presented in a specific sequence of steps, more often than not, you can re-create the same visualization even if the steps are in a different order. You can start experimenting with these once you are more comfortable with Tableau.
Ready to start your Tableau adventure? If so, proceed with gusto!
Creating a bar chart
Bar charts represent numeric values as bars, split across clear categories. Bar charts are very effective charts for comparing magnitudes, and spotting highs and lows in the data.
In this recipe, we will create a bar chart that shows the top 15 movies in 2007-2011 by Average Rotten Tomatoes Score.
Getting ready
To follow this recipe, open B05527_01 – STARTER.twbx file. Use the worksheet called Bar, and connect to the HollywoodMostProfitableStories data source.
How to do it...
The following are the steps to create the top 15 movies bar chart:
Note
Note that once the bars are sorted, you will find the descending sort icon appears beside the axis name, even without hovering over it.
Note
Note that only fields you have used in the sheet can be added in the tooltip via the Insert dropdown. You can also add some predefined values such as Data Source Name, Sheet Name, or Page Count.
How it works...
Bar charts are probably one of the most common, if not the most common, type of chart that is used to visualize data. Bar charts are best used when you are comparing numeric data that is clearly split between different items or categories. These charts are an easy favorite among the chart types because it allows us to easily look at the edges, and see approximately how much longer one bar is than another, even if the difference is very slight. Bars are also often sorted to make it easy to spot top or bottom items.
Bar charts can be presented either vertically or horizontally. The decision sometimes depends on the number of items being represented. If you have many items, labels can become less readable with vertical bar charts. In Tableau, there is an easy way to switch between vertical and horizontal bar charts. There is a swap icon in the Tableau toolbar that swaps the pills from Rows to Columns and vice versa.
In this recipe, we simply dragged the Film dimension to Columns and the Avg. Rotten Tomatoes % measure to Rows, and Tableau already knew what to do. When you check out your Marks card, you will see that the selection is still set to Automatic, but the actual icon beside it is bars:
To help the reader understand the bar chart better, we can also sort the bars in either ascending or descending fashion. A quick way to sort items in Tableau is by hovering over a column header or an axis, until you see a sort icon appear. In an axis, the first click on the icon sorts the marks in descending fashion. The second click sorts ascending, and the third click sorts it back to data source order. With a column header, which is produced by discrete fields, the fields will be sorted alphabetically in ascending order on the first click, descending on the second click, and then back to data source order on the third click.
Note
Discrete and continuous fields are discussed in more detail in Appendix C, Working with Tableau 10. This book comes with a supplementary chapter – Appendix C, Working with Tableau 10, which aims to help the novice navigate their way and get up to speed with Tableau. This supplementary chapter can be downloaded from the following link:
https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/AppendixCWorkingwithTableau10.pdf
