Tableau Public Announces Top 100 Vizzes of Q3, from smash-mouth football to high stakes in Las Vegas

SEATTLE – Nov. 15, 2011 – Tableau Software today announced the top 100 visualizations for Tableau Public in Q3 2011. Tableau ranks the top 100 by viewing sessions and online interactions, with this quarter showing sports trending across the group. The return of football season brought a pack of pigskin visualizations to the top of the list, including CBSSports’ fantasy football draft prep tool by Jamey Eisenberg in first place. The number two viz, by Grantland’s Derek Jacoby, exposed the most inept quarterbacks in the NFL.

The Wall Street Journal reporters authored the top four most interactive visualizations. Interactivity indicates how frequently viewers clicked on the visualization to get additional information or to make the data more relevant to their points of view. Jovi Juan’s look at post office closings led the way with a record 86 percent interactivity. Juan also created the second most interactive viz, examining the rebound in home prices. Mike Sullivan and Chris Canipe’s respective explorations of Borders Bookstore closings and unemployment duration both posted interactivity ratings of more than 75 percent.

The quarter's top visualizations are striking for the breadth of subjects covered:

• 61 websites and 73 individual authors were represented on the list, many appearing for the first time.
• Many authors combined their visualization skills with their watchdog instincts. The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler compared the job records of Republican presidential candidates. Justin Mayo of The Seattle Times looked at Seattle’s highest paid government and public employees by department. Chad Skelton of The Vancouver Sun examined the area’s property tax base, Paige St. John of The Sarasota Herald-Tribune investigated which insurance companies were likely to go bust in a disaster and Evan Storms of California Common Sense continued to build his organization’s impressive transparency portal by visualizing the state’s historical finances.
• 33 percent of the top 100 visualizations were published on non-U.S. sites, and nine different countries are represented in the list.
• A number of visualizations by international authors focused on economic issues. Dario Pagnoni of Italy's Open Data Blog looked at the Italian state budget, Mariana Trigo Viera of Argentina’s La Nacion examined the widening gap between income and housing prices and Ladislav Tvaruzek of the Czech Republic’s IHNED visualized national credit ratings.
• Authors continued to use Tableau Public to tell unexpected stories in compelling ways. Craig Bloodworth looked at the odds of getting into Oxbridge in The Guardian. Alex Kerin of Data Driven Consulting looked at the best places to play Blackjack in Las Vegas and Ashley Gardiner of The Herald Sun looked at which area speeding cameras were giving out the most tickets.

"These visualizations tell incredibly compelling stories," said Elissa Fink, chief marketing officer at Tableau. "They are among the most ambitious, best designed vizzes we’ve seen yet. We continue to be impressed and inspired by our authors."

Tableau Iron Viz Champion: Steve Wexler

Congratulations to Steve Wexler of Data Revelations for winning the Iron Viz Championship at the Tableau Customer Conference 2011 in Las Vegas. Wexler, who qualified for the contest by winning another Tableau Public visualization competition, defeated Alex Kerin and David Newman in a 20 minute competition to visualize Initial Public Offering (IPO) data. His visualization showed that Wall Street insiders seemed to be the biggest short-term winners in the IPO process. Wexler, however, profited handsomely from his visualizing, winning the $2,000 grand prize and an iPad.

About Tableau Software:

Tableau Software is the leading provider of fast analytics and data visualization software. Tableau's award-winning business intelligence applications can be downloaded at http://www.tableausoftware.com/trial. They enable anyone to easily create and share interactive data visualizations, dashboards and analytics, and can scale to organizations of any size or reach. For more information, please visit http://www.tableausoftware.com.