Dashboard week – Day 2 – The Endgame (Nearly)

by Samuel Shurmer

After what can only be described as a gruelling introduction to Dashboard week on Tuesday, read my blog here if you haven’t already, Andy decided to give us a well-structured data set. This was focusing on the Deaths and lives of Various Avengers within the Marvel Comic universe since 1963, that had been put together by Fivethirtyeight.

As a self-confessed comic book geek, this was a rather exciting prospect, though I knew I might get overwhelmed in exploring the data and not looking for any actual analytic questions. After a short period, I jumped into Alteryx, to add a few little calculations to the data to make my dashboard easier to construct.

Just a few joins, but more simple than tuesday

However, like any good dashboard, I had to revisit and update my Alteryx flow on multiple occasions, having to add small calculations here and there to create a more complete workflow.

Andy instructed us to first draw out what we wanted to build, a great method to stop yourself getting lost and giving you a clear goal is helpful. I wanted to draw something with lots of call-backs to the original comics, but also keep it clean like a dashboard should be. Eventually I had a clear plan and set about my various tasks within Tableau.

Just a rough sketch, but you get the ide

In the endgame I was able to carry out everything I wanted, though some not quite to the extent I wanted (getting hold of images was a lot less easy than anticipated and finished with enough time to get this blogpost done before the 5pm shut off!

Most of the challanges were with layout and patience when attempting to get hold of graphics and other materials. Working out what you were able to do within the time limit was key, and I was happy to do this. You can access the Viz here.

Or view it below:

Overall this was a far more pleasant experience than Tuesday, but I still learnt just as much, amazing how much more natural it becomes when a topic aligns with your interests.

As for the rest of the Avengers, I’ll see them tomorrow, any longer and I think I’d certainly see a spoiler…