Destination Data—4th Annual Iron Viz Will Be Hotly Contested

Every year at the Tableau Conference, the winners of our Tableau Public visualization contests meet in Tableau Stadium to answer the ultimate question: whose viz will reign supreme?

Last year, the Iron Viz was an epic battle to visualize movie review data between Ryan Sleeper, Jim Wahl, and Kelly Martin. At the end of the day, Ryan pulled out the win with a beautiful and analytically creative viz that showed that older movies were generally reviewed more favorably than newer movies.

But by now, that's all ancient history. This year, we have an Iron Viz brewing that will be sure to go down as one of our best ever. Let's take a look at the contestants who have worked so hard to get into this year's showdown.

John Mathis won the first spot in the Iron Viz earlier this year by defeating an extremely competitive group of sports viz challengers with his view of fourth down plays. Not only was this viz beautiful, but it took a deeply reflective look at football strategy.

Jeffrey Schaffer is the winner of our Quantified Self contest and our second Iron Viz combatant. He won with a viz of—you guessed it—himself! This musical and visually complex opus knocked us off our feet, even in the midst of some serious competition.

Our final contestant was added to the ranks last week, when he walked away with the win in our Storytelling Contest. Jonathan Trajkovic impressed us with his story on Road Accidents in France with its clean design and unique findings.

Be sure to tweet for your favorite viz during the contest; a portion of the final score for each viz is determined by the number of tweets each contestant receives during the competition. No matter which one of our three contestants you'll be supporting, make sure to make it to the Iron Viz Championship...it's sure to be our best ever.