Navigating your Family History in Tableau by Chris DeMartini

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Navigating your Family History in Tableau by Chris DeMartini

We are going to build two tree views in Tableau, an ancestor view and a descendant view of a dynamically selected root person. Within this post I will walk through building the ancestor tree (a binary tree), feel free to reach out if you want more information on how the descendant tree was built, but will leave that to the imagination for now.

First things first, the credits. I started this effort with two main inputs, (1) the node tree link diagram that was explained and created by Jeffery Shaffer and (2) thedynamic parameter posts that Nelson Davis recently went through. I rely on both of these to get to the family tree viz shown here. In addition to these, I also askedAllan Walker, Noah Salvaterra and Anya A’Hearn for general help and guidance along the way.

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Tableau JS API 101

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Tableau JS API 101

In this post we start with the very, VERY, basics of setting up a simple webpage, embedding a Tableau viz in it, and then adding elements to your webpage that will interact with the Tableau viz. If you already are familiar with the JS API, check back in a few dojo lessons and we will move onto interacting with other web applications to do things like enable voice and gesture control, add sound or haptic feedback, or even apply it to an actual business use case :-p.  If you don’t even really know what html is, this is the place for you to get started on the path to JS API awesome.

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Comb the Hairball with BioFabric in Tableau by Chris DeMartini

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Comb the Hairball with BioFabric in Tableau by Chris DeMartini

Recently I posted about creating circular and hive plot network diagrams using Tableau and a question was posted around whether we could also execute theBioFabric network graph within Tableau. There is a lot of additional information about the BioFabric network graph at their website. The super-quick demo is a good intro to the graph if you have not seen it before.

The answer to the question posted is yes and this post is designed to walk you through the steps needed to build your own BioFabric graph within Tableau.

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Building a Visualization of Transit System Data Using GTFS

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Building a Visualization of Transit System Data Using GTFS

The General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) defines a common format for public transportation schedules and associated geographic information. GTFS "feeds" allow public transit agencies to publish their transit data and developers to write applications that consume that data in an interoperable way.  This post shows you how to use this data to create interactive transit maps in Tableau.

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Give that Tableau Workbook a Makeover with "Find and Replace Gone Wild!"

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Give that Tableau Workbook a Makeover with "Find and Replace Gone Wild!"

So here is the use case.  Lets say your corporate font just got changed from Arial to Segoe UI.  Or, you are just plain tired of having to format your Quick Filters, turn on and off your those pesky tooltip buttons, or want all your field labels to always be hot pink with glitter.  I am still waiting for the glitter feature in Tableau by the way.... hint hint.  You could spend a day changing  your workbooks, yawn!  If you are lucky you have a corporate Sugar Daddy who will buy you Power Tools, an amazing product, do that.  But if not, you can get similar results from DIY Find and Replace in your favorite text editor.  I use Notepad ++ on a PC or Sublime Text on a Mac

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Create multiple custom map layers in Mapbox that you can toggle on and off in Tableau

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Create multiple custom map layers in Mapbox that you can toggle on and off in Tableau

This adds onto the Mapbox customization for Tableau by showing you how to:

  • Import custom shapefiles
  • Edit them in QGIS (optional)
  • Style them in Mapbox
  • Add them to a Tableau .tms so you can toggle them on and off in many combinations to help your visual analysis.
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Fast and Fabulous Custom Maps using Mapbox in Tableau

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Fast and Fabulous Custom Maps using Mapbox in Tableau

So the last time I wanted a custom map, I ended up building my own WMS and spending months and $’s to get the map I wanted.  If you followed that advice - good for you. You and I can now drink at at Tableau conference and tell the young’ins about how we used to have to walk uphill in the snow, wearing only flip flops and a Magnum BI t-shirt, while being pelted with popsicles to get our maps. Then one day recently, I had a cocktail with Allan Walker (that insane mapping Zen dude) who pointed out that if you just opened up a .tms file in notepad, there just wasn’t all that much to it but a wee bit of xml. 

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4th Grade Viz-tastic-ness

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4th Grade Viz-tastic-ness

Last Friday, I had the pleasure of being a guest speaker in my 4th grader, Max's computer class, on the topic of Data Visualization.  They had just started to learn about creating spreadsheets in Excel, and so I used that as the basis for how to communicate effectively with data using Tableau. We started with a table of data in Excel, where we captured very basic data about Gender, Age, Birthday, Favorite Sports, Movies, Games, Foods, etc. and used this to discuss the following topics and build a dashboard all in 45 minutes!:

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#DATA14 Presentation: How to Create a Viz that Stops Traffic

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#DATA14 Presentation: How to Create a Viz that Stops Traffic

I had a wonderful time presenting at the 2014 Tableau Conference, along with Daniel Montgomery and Paul Banoub on "How to Create a Viz that stops Traffic.  The session was hosted by the amazing talented Jewel Loree.  Below is the presenation

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Drought

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Drought

This is a piece that was created for the Tableau  #data14 #vizasart contest  While traveling through California on Holiday last week, I was struck by the different levels of attention paid to the drought.   From the assumed political correctness of Northern California, to the angry “Congress created dust bowl” signs along the I5, to the humorous public service announcements in Southern California about “Breaking-up with your green lawn”, the drought was present all along the state.   I wanted to create an artistic piece based on precipitation data to convey the lack of rain and its effects.

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30 Minutes… Bay Area Bike Share

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30 Minutes… Bay Area Bike Share

This is an entry for the Bay Area Bike Share data challenge sponsored by Stamen Design.  Allan Walker and I decided to examine the announcement of the expansion of SF bike station locations to new neighborhoods and see how that would affect the ability to use the service as a viable commuting option for different locations in the city.  Please visit the mapping methodology tab to understand the geo-spacial calculations Allan used to create the routes and service area visualizations data and information used to create the viz.

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This Story Starts with an Irresistible Map

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This Story Starts with an Irresistible Map

I wanted a Stamen style map in my Viz!  No problem actually, as I could easily design it and export it as an image.  Then I could just use it as background image in Tableau after assigning some Lat, Long coordinates to it.  Viz done… booyah!

Wait, I can't drill into the map and zoom and stuff?

Captains Log… Feb. 6th.  Love the look of my knock off from China town.  I think Shrimp Boy may have had a hand in it even, but I want a real pink pony...

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Design Your Data Viz Like a Product Designer

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Design Your Data Viz Like a Product Designer

After presenting on “Using Design and Emotion to create a Viz with Impact” at TCC13, one of the most common feedback comments was, “I never realized how many iterations and how much time you put into your viz’s.”  Having studied Industrial Design, it seemed only natural to follow a “Product Design” process when creating data visualizations.  Isn’t a data viz a product that you hope people will “consume” because they find it of use and of value? People are bombarded all day long with emails, tweets, Facebook posts, etc.  Why should they spend the time to look at your data visualization?   Just like a product, your viz should be designed with a specific goal and context in mind, and should capture the consumer’s attention immediately and provide a value to them.

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SNAP back to reality

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SNAP back to reality

This viz was inspired by Ron Shaich, founder and CEO of Panera Bread, who participated in a seven-day SNAP Challenge - living on a food and beverage budget of $4.50 a day, the average benefits available to a beneficiary of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps). "I had no clue. My SNAP Challenge last week taught me that merely observing someone else's plight does not hold a candle to consciously altering your habits to better understand what it might be like to live someone else's life." The CNN article on his experience can be seen here . This viz invites to you take the "SNAP challenge" as well as provide some information on the SNAP program from 1986 - 2012.

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Using Design and Emotion to Create a Data Visualization with Impact

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Using Design and Emotion to Create a Data Visualization with Impact

This is the slideshow from my session at the Tableau 2013 Customer Conference.  This session will walk through the process of creating a data visualization based on product design principles and ideas, focusing on overall product goals and user context. A step by step walk through of the design process for two data products, "Twitter TV Set" and "Firework Injuries" will be used as examples to highlight the impact that design and emotion can add to a visualization.  

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Firework Injuries

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Firework Injuries

Using data from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, this visualization highlights all the injuries due to fireworks that happen, highlighting the 4th of July holiday period.  Click on any category to filter on it, and explore what injuries occur across dates, genders, and age groups.  Males seem to be more likely to get injured overall, and their injuries are to their hands and fingers.  Females, are more prone to head and neck injuries.  Sadly, wee ones are almost 10% of injuries, mostly over the 4th of July week.  Hover over any category and you can drill through to the gory details of the injuries (even the naughty bits). Please be safe this 4th of July and enjoy fireworks responsibly.

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Tableau 2012 Iron Viz Championship - Tornado Alley

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Tableau 2012 Iron Viz Championship - Tornado Alley

This viz was created for the Tableau 2012 Iron Viz competition in San Diego at their customer conference.  It was created in 20 minutes, while onstage, using a provided data set.  The viz shows the region called "Tornado Alley" and compares the number of tornadoes and fatalities to other regions. It was the winning viz!

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