Presented the Boston Tableau Users Group Meeting on May 17, 2012. The workbook that goes along with this presentation is on Tableau Public at http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/conditionalformattingv4/Introduction. If you have other ideas, questions, corrections, or issues, I’m glad to respond, email me at qm.jtd (at) smmc.org or on the Tableau forums at http://community.tableausoftware.com/.

1. Applied Zen in Tableau

2. This No way
way no other option
doesn’t really do
what I want

3. This No way
way
Another way
Whack your
brain, your
data, and/or your
viz
with a stick

4. Excel starts with presentation
“Paint” formatting onto the screen

5. Excel starts with presentation
“Paint” formatting onto the screen
Tableau starts with data
Visual elements (and their meaning) derived
from attributes of data

6. Thinking Orthogonally
• Going beyond the “usual” ways of
displaying your data
– Mark labels to show numbers and text
– Dual axes to show calculated trend lines and
reference lines
– Custom SQL to pad and reshape on the fly
– Table calculations for fun and amazement
• There’s always Excel / OpenOffice

7. Southern Maine Medical Center
150 bed hospital and 18 medical Quality Management - tracking >1500
offices located south of Portland metrics
Big bang implementation of new Using legacy systems, paper, SaaS,
medical record, patient care and HR Excel, Access, and Tableau
systems in 2013

8. Provider
Rankings
(sample data)

9. Infection
Prevention
(sample data)

10. Readmissions
Analysis
(sample data)

11. Conditional Formatting
via the Multiple Axis Crosstab
See the viz at
http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/conditionalformattin
gv4/Introduction

12. Multiple Axis Crosstab
• Instead of using the Text mark with no axes on the Columns shelf and
Measure Names as the way to get multiple columns, we have a “fake” axis
for each column and use Text, Shape/Circle/Square and/or Gantt Bar/Bar
marks and mark labels to show the values.
• Advantages over Measure Names/Measure Values:
– Can mix text and numbers, left and right alignment
– Each column/row can be formatted differently using Text, Shape, or Bar marks
– Can even use Bold, Italics, and Underline for calling out text
• Disadvantages
– Extra work to set up
– Extra white space in the view
– Harder to see what's going on in the view, since Measures are on the Label
shelves and not on Rows/Columns or visible on the Measure Values Card
– Sensitive to display size (particularly for Shape/Circle/Square marks)
– Slower performance due to making Tableau do more work to display data

13. Mastering Tableau
• Pick an area
– formatting, mapping, table calculations, survey
analysis, data reshaping, dashboards, Tableau
Server, big data, etc.
• Use Tableau training resources
– Training videos, do the online training, read the
knowledge base articles
– RTM, Rapid Graphs in Tableau book
• Practice, practice, practice
– Tableau forums are a great place

14. Links
• Online Training - http://www.tableausoftware.com/learn/training
• Tableau Forums - http://community.tableausoftware.com/community/forums
• Rapid Graphs in Tableau - http://freakalytics.com/
• Tableau Blogs
– http://freakalytics.com/
– http://www.clearlyandsimply.com/
– http://vizwiz.blogspot.com/
– http://vizcandy.blogspot.com/
– http://jeromecukier.net/
– http://tableaulove.tumblr.com/
– http://eagereyes.org/
– http://voyrapido.tumblr.com/
– http://vizualoutcomes.com/
– http://www.thedatastudio.uk/
– http://www.datarevelations.com/
– http://www.interworks.com/blog/
– http://theinformationlab.co.uk/blog/
• Data visualization: Edward Tufte, Stephen Few, Naomi Robbins, Nathan Yau, etc.

15. The Other Kind of Visualization

16. Comments, Questions?
Jonathan Drummey
qm.jtd@smmc.org
@jonathandrummey