Best of Tableau Web: October 2021

Welcome to Best of Tableau Web! In just a few days, we’ll all be watching—and I’ll be co-hosting for the fourth time—Iron Viz, the ultimate visualization showdown, at Tableau Conference. In just 20 minutes, the three finalists, Lisa Trescott, Pradeep Kumar G, and Samuel Parsons, will build their best data visualizations under the watchful eyes of our judges. To get to the final, they, along with 300 others, entered the feeder competition and faced the scrutiny of their peers and a large pool of guest judges.

Iron Viz isn’t the only viz competition on my radar right now. Recently, I’ve also judged the #Viz4ClimateAction competition: Check out the results.

“The mix of design with storytelling is well balanced; the story [they’re] telling is very clear and so we have charts that are easy to read … Any decisions to go off the beaten track feel like they've been made with intent.” 

— An excerpt from my judge’s feedback on one of the winning #Viz4ClimateAction entries.

The first and most important thing to say is how amazed and grateful I am for all who enter competitions like these. I enjoy seeing the creativity and analytical skills on display, and participating in contests boosts your skills and grows your involvement in a community.

Beyond that, contests provide interesting challenges in how to provide feedback. We must demonstrate high levels of empathy and sensitivity, even when someone has sought our feedback. In a polarized social-media world, it’s too easy to fire off some negative comments without thinking about the consequences. This month, Adam Mico wrote about the complexities of providing feedback. He tackles how we can make feedback impactful while minimizing pain points—it’s a super overview everyone in this space should read. If you’re not checking out the Iron Quest recaps, they’re great examples of respectful, humble feedback.  

Enjoy the highlights from October, and I’ll see you at Iron Viz!

Calculations

• Calculating the Difference Between Any Two Points in Tableau

  Alexander Mou, Vizible Difference

• Tableau how to display 15 minute intervals

  Fabricia, TAR Solutions

• 4 Tips for Writing Complicated Tableau Calculations

  Ken Flerlage, The Flerlage Twins

• Counting Consecutive Occurrences in Tableau

  Alexander Mou, Vizible Difference

• How much do top sub-categories contribute to sales?

  Donna Coles, Donna + DataViz

• 3 Step Tutorial: Implementing Dynamic and Flexible Date Picker in Tableau

  Jennifer Hunter, Tessellation

• Easily Turn a Tableau Group into a Calculated Field

  Eric Parker, OneNumber

Formatting, Design, Storytelling

• Tableau Formatting Series: How to Use Lines & Borders

  Felicia Styer, Playfair Data

• 5 easy cheats to make stellar Tableau dashboards

  Bridget Cogley, TableauFit

• Tableau Stunning Charts Series：Radial Column Chart

  Gary Li, The Data School Australia

Inspiration

• Guest Blog Post: This is Pink Floyd - Remastered

  Nir Smilga, guest blog on The Flerlage Twins

• Overcoming Data Visualization Impostor Syndrome

  Adam Mico, guest blog on Towards Data Science

• Data Visualization Feedback … It’s complicated.

  Adam Mico, guest blog on Bootcamp

• Using Table Calculations to Visualise Maths

  Sebastian van Gerwen, The Data School Australia

• Cost-Plus-Pricing with Tableau & Tableau Prep

  Klaus Schulte, Vizjockey.com

• Chart Chat Live — Round 24

  Steve Wexler, Data Revelations

• Understanding Index Charts and Log Scales

  Steve Wexler, Data Revelations

• Iron Quest – Viz a Year or Decade

  Sarah Bartlett, Sarah Loves Data

Prep

• Identify and Modify Grouped Values in Tableau Prep

  Eric Parker, OneNumber

• Title Case Formatting in Tableau Prep with RegEx

  Igor Garlowski, Interworks

Set and Parameter Actions

• Sets and Filters the Condition and Top N Tabs - What do they do?

  Jim Dehner, See it your way…

• Tony’s Tableau Tips: Set Action button

  Anthony Wong, The Data School Australia

Tips and Tricks

• Dashboard Productivity Tips

  Marc Reid, datavis.blog

• Fix the Reset All Filters Button in Tableau

  Anthony Smoak, Smoak Signals

• 5 Reasons to Use a Calendar Table (Date Dimension) in Tableau

  Ken Flerlage, The Flerlage Twins

• How to build an interactive line chart comparing across quarters

  Quyen Ha, The Data School Australia

Visualizations

• View last month’s Viz of the Day on Tableau Public gallery.

I hope you've enjoyed this edition of Best of the Tableau Web! For updates throughout the month, follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn, and check out the list of blogs I follow for Best of the Tableau Web. If you don’t see yours on the list, I invite you to add it here.