Your data doesn’t stand still… why should your dashboards? Check out these creative techniques for visualizing data – all available with just a click in Tableau 8!

1. 5 Creative Ways
to Display Data
In 2013
Your data doesn’t stand still… why
should your dashboards?
Check out these creative techniques
for visualizing data – all available with
just a click in Tableau 8!

2. 1
Tree/Bar Combo
The bar chart – as classic
as a grilled cheese! But
what would grilled cheese
be without tomato soup?
As you can see this viz
allows us to compare
relative sizes, just like a
bar chart, but it also uses
a tree map inside the bars
to show us more detail.
We can see from the bars
that Barack Obama raised
more money in total. But
the colorful tree map
shows us the other half
of the story: Romney’s
average donation was
much higher.

3. 2
Bubble Charts
Bubble charts are a
beautiful way to display
comparative information
and are especially useful
when broken up by a
category, as you see here.
This viz shows average
campaign donations by
occupation.Those with
averages less than $250 or
totals less than $10,000 are
filtered out.
Clearly, the attorneys went
with Obama and the
bankers went with Romney!
They only have “Vice
President” in common.

4. 3
Infographic Style
Often, displaying data is
about telling a story.
Ideally it would be easy
to add images,
annotations, legends,
labels and links to your
own stories where
appropriate.
In Tableau 8, you can
create dashboards that
allow you to place any
object on top of your viz
(even another viz!).
The result? A clear and
concise story that tells
itself.

5. Unit Charts
Unit charts are a simple
way of displaying the
relative number or
hierarchy of items.
Basically, you use colored
icons (in this case circles)
to show how many of
something belong to a
category or order.
In this viz, we are looking
at the fastest cars in the
world. They are arranged
from fastest to “slowest”
from top left to bottom
right, with the color of
the circle representing
their 0-60 time and
grouping them with cars
of similar speed.

6. 5
Word Cloud
You’re right! In most
cases there are better
ways to display data than
a word cloud. For
example, they are not
fantastic for comparing
relative sizes or amounts.
But, word clouds can be
an excellent way to show
the frequency of different
words or events.
Here you can see words
in tweets during the week
of #TCC12 - and Beer
Week. Beer Week seems
to have won this race…
we’ll console ourselves
with a porter!