Introduction to Tableau

Tableau is a powerful tool used for data analysis and visualization. It allows the creation of amazing and interactive visualization and that too without coding. Tableau is very famous as it can take in data and produce the required data visualization output in a very short time. Basically, it can elevate your data into insights that can be used to drive your action in the future.

What is Tableau?

Tableau is a visual analytics platform that is revolutionizing the way we use data to solve problems by enabling individuals and organisations to make the most of their data.

Tableau is a great data visualization and business intelligence application that can be used to report and analyse massive amounts of data. Salesforce purchased Tableau in June 2019, an American firm founded in 2003. It enables users to build various charts, graphs, maps, dashboards, and stories for visualising and analysing data in order to aid in business choices. Tableau offers several unique and fascinating features that make it one of the most popular business intelligence (BI) applications.

Why use Tableau?

Tableau is the fastest and most powerful visualization tool. It is very easy to use. There are no complex formulas like Excel and other visualization tools. It provides the features like cleaning, organizing, and visualizing data, it easier to create interactive visual analytics in the form of dashboards. These dashboards make it easier for non-technical analysts and end-users to convert data into understandable ones.

Tableau Features

• Tableau supports powerful data discovery and exploration that enables users to answer important questions in seconds
• No prior programming knowledge is needed; users without relevant experience can start immediately with creating visualizations using Tableau
• It can connect to several data sources that other BI tools do not support. Tableau enables users to create reports by joining and blending different datasets
• Tableau Server supports a centralized location to manage all published data sources within an organization

Values in Tableau

There are two types of values in the tableau:

• Dimensions: Values that are discrete(which can not change with respect to time) in nature called Dimension in tableau. Example: city name, product name, country name.
• Measures: Values that are continuous(which can change with respect to time) in nature called Measure in tableau. Example: profit, sales, discount, population.

Advantages of Tableau

• Quick calculation- All the calculations on the tableau done by the backend, so it is relatively faster than any other tool.
• Interactive dashboards- Tableau dashboards are very interactive and easy to draw.
• No manual calculation- All the calculations are done by the tableau only. There is no manual calculation, but in some specific cases, we used calculated fields for calculation.
• A large amount of data- Tableau can handle a large amount of data. Different types of visualization can be created with a large amount of data without impacting the performance of the dashboards.
   

Disadvantages of Tableau

• High Cost- tableau is a paid tool for visualization, and it is a reason why people are not using tableau so much.
• Static and single value parameters- Tableau’s parameters are static and always single value can be selected using a parameter. Whenever the data gets changed, these parameters need to be updated manually every time.
• Limited Data Preprocessing- Tableau is strictly a visualization tool. Tableau Desktop allows you to do very basic preprocessing.

Visualizations in tableau

There are a lot many charts available in the tableau. Some of them are:

• Bar chart: For the bar chart, we need 0 or more dimensions and 1 or more measures. To create a bar chart, simply select the desired dimensions and measures and then select the bar chart on the SHOW ME section, or drag the dimensions in a column and measure in a row.

• Pie chart: For the pie chart, we need 1 or more dimensions and 1 or 2 measures. To create a pie chart, simply select the desired dimensions and measures and then select Pie chart on the SHOW ME section.

• Stacked bar chart: For the stacked bar chart, we need 1 or more dimensions and 1 or more measures. To create a stacked bar chart, simply select the desired dimensions and measures and then select the stacked bar chart on the SHOW ME section.

• Side-by-side bar chart: For the side-by-side bar chart, we need 1 or more dimensions and 1 or more measures. To create a side-by-side bar chart simply select the desired dimensions and measures and then select a side-by-side bar chart on the SHOW ME section.

• Line chart: For the line chart, we need 1 date, 0 or more dimensions, and 1 or more measures. To create a line chart, simply select the desired dimensions and measures and then select the line chart on the SHOW ME section.

• Packed bubbles chart: For the packed bubbles chart, we need  1 or more dimensions and 1 or 2 measures. To create a packed bubble chart simply select the desired dimensions and measures and then select the packed bubbles chart on the SHOW ME section.