An Introduction to Tableau
by K. Yue
1. Introduction
- Tableau is a software company focused on interactive data visualization and analytics products.
- Three major products:
- Tableau desktop
- Tableau server
- Tableau online
- Students can download tableau desktop for free: https://www.tableau.com/academic/students.
- Our assignments will be based on Tableau desktop.
The general steps of using Tableau desktop:
- Connect to data sources
- Build data views
- Enhance the data views
- Create worksheets
- Create and organize dashboards
- Create a story
Our class with cover very simple examples of steps 1 to 4 only.
Classwork example:
[1] Prepare data sources
- Connect to MS Access file Coffee Chain.mdb. This is provided by Tableau as examples.
- Drag all three tables of the MS Access Tables in the “Data Source” tab.
[2] Prepare data views
- After connecting to the data source, Tableau distinguish between
- dimensions: fields that contain discrete categorical information (e.g. type Boolean, string, possibly primary key, etc.)
- measures: fields that contain quantitative, numerical information (e.g. number).
The idea is that measures can be analyzed and viewed with respect to dimensions, as in data warehouses.
Example actions:
- Dimension to Column: 'Product Type' and 'Market Size'.
- Measure to Row: Sales
[3] Enhance data views
E.g. use "text table".
[4] Create worksheets
Each worksheet provides a data view and analytic view.
2. Resources