All Visualizations Stories

Here in the United Kingdom where I work, we’re counting down until the general election on May 8. It’s a fascinating election as our nation comes to grips with coalition politics. The extent to which the media controls the outcomes of elections is important and yet hard to quantify. This has become harder since the advent of social media. This year’s event is being called the social media election, and diverse organisations such as the BBC and Buzzfeed will be covering it using their own distinct styles. What does the data tell us?

While adorable, gauge charts can be misleading and take up too much space.

Learn more detail about an addition to the Tableau calculation language. The language changes are small, deceptively small, but the impact on your data analysis will be profound. Level of Detail Expressions (LOD Expressions) in Tableau 9 will enable richer and more reusable visualizations.

5 chart types you may have never used that add flair to any dashboard.

Over the past month, we've had the time of our lives interviewing Santa about how he uses Tableau. Last week, he shared his naughty-or-nice dashboard. And the week before, he told us how he monitors toy quality around the world. Now, as he enters crunch time for big day, Santa is prepared to share his third and final dashboard. And this one could be the most important of all. After all, what's the single most important part of his global operation? Being able to travel the world in a single night.

In case you missed it, last week Santa revealed that he uses Tableau to manage his global operations. And for every week in December, he'll share a new dashboard that looks at one area of his business. In response to Santa's statements, we received a number of questions—including how Santa uses Tableau to determine who gets a lump of coal. This week, we're excited to share one of Santa's most important dashboards: His naughty-and-nice list.

Here at Tableau, we get to hear amazing stories about what our customers are doing every day. From transportation to retail to entertainment to education, customers in all industries and job functions are doing amazing things with their data. But there's one customer who defies all classification, and he's just agreed to do a case study with us. His name is Santa Claus.

In just a few weeks, I'll have been working at Tableau for a whole year! What better way to celebrate my "Tableau-versary" than to present this month's round-up of amazing blog posts about Tableau? October was a busy month in the blog-o-sphere. We saw an explosion of creative tips, tricks, and vizzes—and even found out that the Tableau Zen Masters don't know everything. The Tableau community also got wickedly creative this month. KK Molugu built an amazing piece of viz art. And I must give a shout-out to Jonathan Drummey, who wrote what I think may be the best title I've ever seen in a blog post: "O Extract, Where Art Thou?" So what are you waiting for? Check out this month's round-up of Tableau tips, tutorials, and wickedly creative hacks!

Kids these days! From the young girl who shares scatterplots on YouTube to the 11-year-old who builds Story Points in his free time—future data rockstars prove that Tableau is an all-ages tool.

V = T + I + E + C Does the above equation contain all you need to know about measuring the success of your visualization? John Stasko thinks so, and he explained why in his keynote at EuroVis 2014, in Swansea, last week.

Designing effective dashboards is a challenge of design, usability, and efficient insight. There are many sources of inspiration. At our Conference on Tour in The Hague, Steffen Mueller (@iluvanalytics) from HERE built a NASDAQ-inspired dashboard of net promoter scores.

In 1947, Kilwins opened its first chocolate shop in Petoskey, Michigan. Since then, nearly 100 franchises have opened their doors across the country. And with decadent offerings such as fudge, ice cream, and a signature treat called the Tuttle, it's no wonder this chocolatier has been so successful! But even with such a delicious existence, something was missing from this business' life. We know, it's hard to believe. But in a recent interview with Jeff Hall—Kilwins' Director of Marketing, Commerce, and IT—we learned what happened when Kilwins added a new ingredient: a better business intelligence tool.