Introduction Although Tableau gives us many ways of counting and labeling data points on the charts we create, every once in a while we have to be creative to get the counting and labeling the way we want it to be. This post shows one example that required me to be a little creative to get…
Introduction The Tableau data reshaper is an outstanding tool and you should have it in your toolbox of Tableau techniques if you are serious about doing a lot of data analytics in Tableau.
Introduction I have a pretty good memory and I’m generally well organized, but I now have to admit that my brain gets overloaded at times with work, family, and life in general.
Introduction I was recently using Alteryx (www.alteryx.com) to blend an XML and a CSV file when a buddy at work asked me if I could do the same thing in Tableau.
Introduction For more than 20 years, I did a lot of groundwater flow and transport numerical modeling. This work prepared me well for my current career in business analytics, but life sure would have been easier if I had Tableau Desktop back then!
Introduction I have used many hundreds of comma-delimited (*.csv) files with Tableau over the past few years. I like to use csv files because Tableau reads them really fast and I can easily build gigantic files. Over the years, I have been using business-related files that have continued to increase in size from thousands, to millions,…
Introduction The problem described herein has happened to me far too many times and I am somewhat embarrassed to have to write this post, but I feel that someone has to do it.
Introduction About two months ago, I received a few files that contained patient hospitalization data from a group of hospitals. For this, I will be forever grateful because I’ve had a lot of fun working with the data. After giving me the files, one senior analyst told me: “Good luck to you because no one has ever been…
Introduction Jett is now 2.5 years old. He knows his ABC’s, can count to 20 in English and to 10 in Spanish. His brain is a sponge. So tonight, we decided to play with his new group of blocks to practice learning words and the difference between small and capital letters. It was a lot…
Introduction I use the “set” functionality in Tableau for a lot of different things. “Sets” are very useful to me and I am still trying to learning how to use them effectively in my work. Because there are multiple techniques for creating sets in Tableau, there might be better techniques available to control the set…
Introduction In the past couple of blog posts, I’ve been writing about how I get data ready for analysis in Tableau. One special data condition that arises is the data type that I’ll call an alpha-numeric field. This data type can be tricky to work with, so you have to pay attention to the details…
Introduction Rarely, if ever, does data arrive to me in the exact format that I need it to be in for efficient analysis in Tableau. This means something has to be done to the data before I can use it. In Part 1 of this series, I provide specific examples of real-world data format changes…
Introduction It does not happen often, but whenever I get a flat file (i.e., fixed-width ASCII file) to work with, I have to work some magic on the file to get it ready for Tableau. This post describes how some of that magic happens.
Introduction I use Tableau for scheduling basketball games and reporting tournament results. One of the difficulties I have faced in these applications arises because team schedules and results are stored in multiple dimensions. This means that a team can be either a home team or a visiting team in the database, which are two different…
Introduction Blogs are one of the best sources for learning Tableau techniques that I have found. A couple of the problems with using Blogs as a learning tool, however, is that they are scattered throughout the web and they are not published on a routine schedule. Unless you are really diligent in subscribing to the…