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…
Preamble Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 07:31:44 EDT From: Patrick Leach <leach@BEDFORD.PROGRESS.COM> Subject: Re: alt.tools.hunting (was Re: Bagging and Emmert! (was re: Bagging the big iron)) Patrick Olguin <polgu@PARACEL.COM> writes: >[shameless bragging deleted] >I love these stories. Keep ’em coming guys. OK, Paddy O’Deen, of Parts Unknown, HaHaHalifornia, you asked for it. Now it’s my turn…
Introduction I suppose that I have been blogging long before blogs were invented. Various old hard drives hold stories from my past, just waiting to be published. I thought of this story the other day when I was looking for something in my woodworking shop. I wondered if I could find the text. Well I…
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…
Introduction I think that writing a useful blog shouldn’t be too hard with the technologies we have. But it is.
Introduction Whether I’m exploring personal or work-related data, I frequently use a technique that I call “creating Tableau Buckets”.
Introduction Earlier this year I realized that one of the absolutely most powerful features of Tableau is its ability to act as a visual interface to any type of database that I can dream of.
Introduction Fifty is the theme for today. This is blog post number 50 and I’m 50 years old. Hence, my 50/50 list.
Introduction I guess you can say that I’ve been on a mission lately to understand and document the performance, capabilities, and limitations of Tableau Desktop software. Today I decided to answer the following question: When is it necessary to switch from a professional workstation to a “big-data platform” to analyze large structured data files with…
Introduction I have always liked to benchmark computer programs. For that reason, I thought it would be fun to see how fast Tableau is in reading typical structured data sets that I have used in Process Improvement work. The question I want to specifically answer is: How fast does Tableau read data from a character-separated…
Introduction Yesterday and earlier today, I had a chance to experiment with Tableau coupled to Amazon Redshift. What I am about to write isn’t totally comprehensive, but if I had this knowledge yesterday morning, I would have saved a few hours of work. Hopefully this information will save you some time, too, if you try…