This is my first visualization using tableau, will share to you the steps, hands-on experience using this tool, and my simple visualization using the UNICEF dataset.
So, what is Tableau?
Tableau is a visual analytics platform transforming the way we use data to solve problems — empowering people and organizations to make the most of their data.
There are many distributions that tableau has, that you can choose from, one of which is Tableau public. This version is free to use and of course, there are limitations compared to a paid version. If you are a student you can use the paid version for one year, you just have to provide documents that you are currently enrolled in during your application. In my case, I took this opportunity and applied for a software license as a student.
Connecting to your data source…
There are many ways to connect to a data source, in the public version, connection to a different RDBMS is not available, so that’s one of the disadvantages of the public version, moving forward, my data source for this activity is Microsoft excel and I selected Microsoft Excel.
One of the features that I like about using this tool is everything is just drag and drop, for this instance, I just dragged the sheet/dataset to the upper right pane (“Drag tables here to relate them) part and it will automatically load your data and tableau will intelligently know the data types of each column in your data set.
The dataset is from UNICEF data about the Cause of Death to Children, for the year 2000 and 2016 and is composed of two sheets, see Sheets part) and I used “Country-specific Estimates” for this activity.
You have to keep in mind also your variables (columns) if it is a dimension or a measure because it will determine the kind of graph that you are going to make.
Like for example, in the right pane of your tableau interface, Show Me button (Fig. 03), you can check the type of graph that you want to create, in my example if you want to create stacked bars, you need to have one or more Dimensions and one or Measures.
Measure is numerical and Dimension is a categorical value in your dataset.
My First Viz !!
Before creating your visualization, you have to figure out first what is it that you want to see within your data set, so in my case, I visualize the mortality rate of aids to children in ASEAN country(see Fig. 04).
To do this simple bar graph, first I click on Sheet1 where I will work out that graph. Tableau is a table wherein you can put/drag and drop your variables in Columns and Rows. I placed “Country” (Dimension) to Columns part and “Aids” (Measures) to Rows part, you can change the computation/basic stat of measures(sum, count, average .,etc), and tableau created that graph automatically, you just to apply some formatting or filters based on your requirements
So, that’s how I created my first visualization using tableau.
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