May 2012
1 post
Creating a Dynamic Anchor date with a Relative...
Ever wonder how you might change a Tableau anchor date (see image below) to be dynamic? Fear not, I’ve created a solution which might satisfy those individuals and/or groups who clamor for greater flexibility.
Here are my 3 (yes, just three) steps to Tableau magic:
Step 1: Create (and then show) the following Parameter(s):
Note:
Anchor Date is a Date data type
Choose Interval is a Integer...
April 2012
2 posts
Controlling the 'Data Gristle' with Tableau
What do Tableau Software, Business Intelligence and User Experience have in common? Combined, they represent the New Age of Data. More specifically, they push data visualization, data personalization and data emergence to higher levels of understanding. At the present moment, we are seeing a massive cultural shift in how we understand our corporate data, industrial data or, simply, our personal...
Tableau Software and the ‘Leans’
“We all had ‘spatial D’ or were suffering from ‘the leans.’” - Major Paul ‘Goose’ Gosden, U.S. Marine Corps
So, really, what is Spatial D?
‘It’s short for spatial disorientation, a catchall term to describe the summed result of the various perceptual illusions and degraded sensory perception…’ (Scientific American Mind, May/June 2012).
Aside from the 60s sounding name, Spatial D can have a...
March 2012
2 posts
The Future of Data: Visualization.
So, a bit too much to post with only a few characters, so I’ll expand on what I’m quite thrilled about: data and visualization.
‘19th century culture was defined by the novel, 20th century by cinema, the culture of the 21st century will be defined by the interface.’ – Lev Manovich
The aforementioned quote was seen in a spectacular TED video about data, art, and technology. What was particularly...
Tableau and the IIDA
I’m confident the sudden, all-encompassing change in pace for ‘data’ over the last few years has been fueled by our need to want more information out of our world. The immediacy and sheer speed with which it arrives is faster than most of us have been accustomed. This is not to say that the information has not always been available; rather, it’s that all of the information is now arriving,...
February 2012
1 post
Tableau Data Engine power
What follows is a very context-specific scenario where the user needed a live connection without any delay. They needed speed and power. Tableau, I said, could certainly answer that question. Here’s what I learned…
When this works:
You need a live and fast connection (think ‘speed of thought’ here)
You have custom SQL which has multiple table joins
You don’t want to have to query...
January 2012
4 posts
Allegory of the Business
Data into information and information into knowledge. What, exactly, does this mean to you? For the latest version, refer to this article. It’s interesting how much this comes up in everyday business conversation (and rarely in anything else outside of the business). But, I question how functional it is to our business use; more appropriately, what the heck does it even mean? Isn’t everything we...
Why Visualization →
Too good:
‘Finally, and perhaps most importantly, visualizations give us access to actionable insight.’
Create Knowledge with Data
This seems to be a hot topic, as well it should, around the info viz community. While I agree that the purpose of each and every visualization should be to convey some meaning, I do not believe that each viewer is going to instantaneously understand this ‘masterpiece’. Every one of us is going to approach a chart and/or dashboard with a sense of curiosity and intrigue. If it’s done...
November 2011
1 post
Tableau Software: A Lesson in Design and Data...
‘Again, the designer’s job is not to fill in all the space. It is to make information accessible and appealing. The best use of the page’s empty space is to help make information scannable, not to make the pages pretty. The point is to increase the page’s absorbability.’ - Alex W. White
Let’s admit, there’s information everywhere. We hear about it on the...
October 2011
9 posts
Pure and complex →
bobulate:
Weather affects the market — how sunny (or not) shades how people trade stocks and buy products. As does the complexity of product names. But complexity has a place, says psychologist Adam Alter:
What complexity does is it acts as a cognitive roadblock. …. If you have a communication that last 30 seconds or a minute or even five minutes, if you know there’s a particular point that you...
Networked Knowledge and Combinatorial Creativity |... →
Read this. You’ll like it.
Infographics - GOOD →
A growing field and a must read... →
What does that mean?
An interesting point was made today during a planning meeting. Has visualization really dropped to a point in which our Visual Analysis (more detailed and involved than typical analysis) is being led by the text-fueled masses? It shouldn’t come as a surprise that reaching for a deeper answer involves digging through the multiple tables in a data mart or simply drilling into an Excel farm. By...
Tableau Software: Providing Multi-sensory Wonder
The future of Business Intelligence (or just data intelligence) has certainly arrived with the set of tools made available from Tableau Software. I won’t expand on the many reason why (numerous experts have already done so). I will, however, highlight one important aspect I believe will have far-reaching implications for our data consumption skills. The new ‘touch’ capabilities with Tableau 6.1...
We Seek Information
“In effect, the answers the computer provides fall within the ‘finite framework’ of the data put into it. But is this finite set, extracted from infinity, the best one? The first simplifications stemming from calculation most often lead to criticizing the data and imagining new ones. No computer will tell us which data are missing.” - Jacques Bertin
There are many drives...
