Data visualisation for noobs (like me) – A Tableau based blog series
An introduction and resources to get you started
I’m relatively new to data visualisation in the big data and BI sense, and whilst I still have a whole lot further to go, I have learned a lot in my four weeks here at the Data School at the Information Lab.
One particularly striking things in the data visualisation world, is the community, in particular, the Tableau community. From what I’ve seen of the tableau community it’s all about sharing knowledge and I feel that I have taken advantage of so much of the knowledge and help that is available online, that I’d like to give something back. Now, I am no seasoned analyst, I’m no Tableau Zen Master or Alteryx Ace, but since I’ve started here at the Data School, I’ve come across a few things that would have helped me a lot at the very beginning of my data journey. So here is my way of giving back to the community, a Tableau based data visualisation blog series, for for complete beginners.
My hope is to make a blog series with bite size data analysis tips, for beginners, because, if you’re anything like me, I found it a little hard to know where to start! I’ll be going through how to make things happen in Tableau as well as sharing other gems of knowledge, on Tableau itself, maybe a bit of Alteryx, book reviews etc.
Just to get you started, here is a little online repository of inspiration:
Staples:
- For complete noobs, a great place to start with tableau is on the tableau website itself, where they have some easy to follow introductory videos which you can work along side with some sample data: http://www.tableau.com/learn
- The Tableau Public gallery is always a great place to find inspiration: https://public.tableau.com/s/gallery – The great thing is you can download the workbooks and give it a try yourself!
- For a regular source of data to play with sign up to this newsletter: https://tinyletter.com/data-is-plural
- For lots of practice and great advice, try #MakeoverMonday: http://vizwiz.blogspot.co.uk/p/makeover-monday-challenges.html – and make sure to tweet your tableau public links with #MakeoverMonday!
Websites and Blogs:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/
http://www.thefunctionalart.com/
http://www.theguardian.com/data
http://junkcharts.typepad.com/
http://www.visualisingdata.com/
http://www.storytellingwithdata.com/
http://paintbynumbersblog.blogspot.co.uk/
http://vizcandy.blogspot.co.uk/ –
http://duelingdata.blogspot.co.uk/ –
Books:
- ‘Storytelling with Data – a data visualization guide for business professionals’ by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic – book review soon to come!
- ‘Golden Rules for Great Business Charts – 50 practical tips for business professionals’ by Laszlo Zsom
- ‘Now you see it – Simple visualization techniques for quantitative analysis’ by Stephen Few
