Tableau Tips

When it comes to my favorite chart types, scatter plots are a close third behind bar charts and line graphs. In several industries, and especially scientific journals, scatter plots are the favorite choice because of their ability to reveal and communicate correlations. Another benefit of this chart type is it is one of the few visualizations that allow you to view many marks in a small space. No, you cannot analyze every individual mark because they will likely overlap, but scatter plots make it easy to identify outliers and the aforementioned correlations. But wait – there’s more! Due to the way scatter plots are set up with a measure on each axis, adding reference lines for the average of each axis creates a natural four-quadrant segmentation. This is a great technique for isolating different groups so you can act on them individually. This post will show you how to make scatter plots and take them to the next level in three ways. We’ll cover (1) a formatting trick to make your scatter plots stand out, (2) ideas for maximizing the data-ink ratio in the context of scatter plots, and (3) a calculated field that will automatically break your dimension members into four usable segments.

Maps are one of the most effective chart types in Tableau and are also among the easiest chart types to create. They are effective because they help us decode latitude and longitude combinations almost instantly, allowing us to see patterns between geographic locations that may otherwise be challenging to discover. They are easy to create because Tableau comes prepackaged with thousands of geographic coordinates all over the world. This makes it so that simply double-clicking on a dimension that Tableau recognizes as geographic will create a map on the view. What’s more, Tableau maps are technically scatter plots with points at the combination of each latitude-longitude pair and an image of a map in the background. This unlocks even more applications including the ability to map anything – even if it’s not related to geography. This post will use a map of my top 10 favorite barbecue restaurants to share three ways to take your Tableau maps to the next level. Tips include a formatting trick, instructions for how to unlock additional map styles, and how to create a dual-axis map using a combination of generated and custom coordinates.

To draw a highlight table in Tableau, you need one or more dimensions and exactly one measure. This is the same criteria to draw a raw text table in Tableau, except with highlight tables, you’re limited to one measure instead of one or more measures. This one measure is what encodes the cells in the table by the preattentive attribute of color. It’s essentially a spreadsheet with colored cells. As I shared in my post, Why do you visualize data?, the highlight table is my favorite chart type for introducing the value of data visualization. I think it works well because most companies are still using spreadsheets for most of their reporting, and by converting a text table to a highlight table, the audience is forced to take advantage of the preattentive attribute of color. This kind of becomes a gateway to more complex visualizations. Highlight tables are already more engaging and effective than a text table / crosstab view, but this post aims to provide three more ways to make your highlight tables even better in Tableau.