Best of the Tableau Web: Mathematics, poetry, and video games

Check out the Best of the Tableau Web from the community in June!

Welcome to June’s Best of the Tableau Web. I remain hugely impressed by the creativity of the community and your willingness to share ideas. Keep it up! And if you are considering starting your own blog, do take the plunge! Then make sure you let me know on Twitter (@acotgreave) and I’ll add it to my feed reader.

A new blog this month is Data Poetry, from Josh Smith, in Ohio. Right out of the blocks, he’s written a deeply thoughtful post about how visualizations can be designed with a “cadence” in mind, similar to movies, poetry and more. It’s a really interesting post, and I’m excited to see how Josh’s blog develops.

I also want to recognize those who take Tableau beyond the limits of Show Me. Alexander Mou’s Modulo Multiplication Circles are absolutely beautiful. Super Mario in Tableau by Infotopic is, well, it’s Super Mario in Tableau! How cool is that? The latter is just a taster about the creative potential our new Extensions capability will bring to the Tableau platform.

Finally, I’d like to highlight the Flerlage twins’ implementation of the Recamán Sequence. I watched an amazing video on the Numberphile channel about this, and sent a Tweet wondering if it could be done in Tableau. Within 48 hours Ken had implemented this beautiful number sequence in Tableau, followed soon by his twin brother, Kevin. Ken’s blog describes both of their approaches. There’s much to love about this—not just the beautiful results, but also how two different approaches can create a similar end point. As Ken says at the end of the post, “What you can do with it is almost limitless!! If you can imagine it, you can probably visualize it.”

With that in mind, I look forward to seeing what you do in July!