Kasia Gasiewska-Holc Bio

Kasia is a Marketing Data Analyst at Refinitiv. At work, she’s responsible for building actionable and insightful Tableau dashboards for a variety of teams across the business, with a strong focus on analyzing marketing data. After work, she’s also a wedding stationery designer and an avid calligrapher. She tries to combine her passion for data analysis and love of graphic design by creating enticing visualizations that are not only pleasing to the eye but are also meaningful and touch on important topics, such as sustainability and environmental issues.

Kasia has worked with Tableau for over a year now but her journey with data visualization started more than 4 years ago, back in Scotland when she worked for an advertising agency providing clients across the UK with performance reports from their brands’ campaigns. But it was only after she joined the Marketing Effectiveness team at Refinitiv when she was introduced to Tableau and was able to learn how truly powerful that tool is.

QUESTIONS

Link: https://public.tableau.com/profile/kasia.gasiewska.holc#!/vizhome/GarbageintheOceanVOTD/GarbageintheOcean

Michael: Hello Kasia. Congratulations for your VOTD and Viz of the Week for your Garbage in the Ocean Dataviz. I think everyone who has viewed it on Tableau Public really is impressed by how you got the waves to move back and forth.

Can you tell my readers the process you went through to develop this data visualization? For example, how you gathered and prepped the data, created the design, and translated that into Tableau.

Kasia: Thank you! I was absolutely thrilled to see all the positive feedback that my viz generated. It’s truly gratifying to see your hard work paying off!

As for the process of putting the viz together, to be honest, the approach I took wasn’t very structured. It was very much an iterative process, as I constantly tried out different options and went back and fixed things that I didn’t quite like or I thought could be done better.

I started with an idea. This is usually an easy part. I think many of data viz experts frequently have these moments when they see or talk about something and think to themselves: “oh, that would be a fantastic topic to dive into in a viz!”. At least that’s how I feel a LOT, ha! Then you start doing research, looking for the right data that would help you explore that idea and eventually you find out it’s actually not as easy as it initially seemed. Either there is a lack of publicly available data or the data you managed to find is very messy and not very useful.

In the case of my recent viz, data availability was definitely a challenge. I knew I wanted to analyze types of debris items floating in the ocean but I wanted to put this in the context of time needed for each item to decompose and that was a tricky part. For the majority of items on the list, I wasn’t able to find online even a rough estimate of decomposition time. Items that are made entirely out of plastic were especially problematic. Plastic has been widely available for only around 70 years now so we don’t exactly know how long it takes for it to decompose in the natural environment. Scientists conducted some research on this and provided us with approximations but these are largely dependent on various variables, such as the level of sunlight exposure, size and material thickness of an item etc. I tried to look at each item separately and estimate decompose time-based on as many variables as I was able to find the data for (e.g., looking at the type of plastic used in the production of an item, as each type has different decomposition time).

Once I had the data collected, I took a piece of paper and sketched out the layout of my dashboard. This is a step I always take before I even start playing around with numbers and different fields in Tableau. That helped me to decide where each element of the dashboard should go, including all graphic elements that I had to independently design in Adobe Illustrator beforehand.

Once I had this figured out, I created charts, tooltips, the legend, zoom-in functionality etc. I finished up with the wave animation as I knew it would take up some extra time since I have never done it before. At the same time, if it wouldn’t work, I’d make the graphic static so having these animations didn’t really impact my decision to either publish or not publish the viz.

Michael: You are a Marketing Data Analyst at Refinitiv. Can you tell us a bit about Refinitiv and how you use Tableau on a day-to-day basis in your work?

Kasia: I’ve been with the company for around 1.5 years now. However, Refinitiv has been established only 6 months ago. It was previously known as Thomson Reuters Financial & Risk business. In a nutshell, Refinitiv provides a wide range of financial products and services focusing on B2B clients.

My position is strongly focused on analyzing the effectiveness of our marketing efforts from many different angles. Overall, I would say I use Tableau around 80% of the time. At work, I am holistically involved in the process of developing every each dashboard that goes out to our stakeholders (internal teams)- from planning and strategy to development, feedback, and maintenance. My job involves a lot of problem-solving because no two dashboards are the same and there are always different challenges with every single one of them. But I actually see this as a great perk as there’s no way for me to get bored with what I do and I learn something new every single day!

Michael: Can you tell us three of your favorite Tableau Desktop tips and tricks?

Kasia: There are many tricks in Tableau that I love and use on a daily basis.

First one is the transparent worksheets feature. This functionality definitely helps my vizzes to stand out and be quite unique because I frequently use it when I am overlaying my charts with custom graphic elements. Normally, if you place a PNG image on the top of a worksheet, the image becomes an active layer so you’ll lose tooltips interactivity. Thus, I usually duplicate the worksheet, set it to fully transparent (not only the background but also the color fill of different chart elements) and place it as a floating object on the top of the image. This way you can have the chart, graphic elements and tooltips all at once (a data viz sandwich J)!

Another one of my fave tricks is to build tabular views using column placeholders within the columns shelf, rather than actual metrics that you want to display. This technique allows you to have different formatting on each column, as well as set up custom tooltips per each one of them. I believe I first came across this trick in this article: http://drawingwithnumbers.artisart.org/older-but-still-useful-conditional-formatting/#more-337

Lastly, I cannot forget about my latest favorite feature and that is custom animations of course! Possibilities are endless here, you can really use this new trick to elevate your dashboard design but I think keeping it subtle is the key to success. For those who didn’t have a chance to read my guest blog post on how to build custom animations intended for Tableau, I highly recommend having a read. You can find it here.

Michael: Tableau v2019.1 was just released. What do you think is still missing in Tableau Desktop?

Kasia: To be honest, I did not have a chance to test out the new version yet. However, I have read about it online, plus I tuned in to the Tableau “The Future of Analytics” webcast last week so I am pretty excited to put my hands on the latest version as soon as I can.

I would say “Ask Data” has a great potential to really change and simplify the way we interact with data so that will definitely be the first feature I’ll test out. I’m also happy to see the Google Ads to be added as a new connector. I have used the beta version for quite some time now so I would be interested to see if issues that I have previously encountered with the connector, have been fixed in the latest software version.

There were few (mostly minor) issues I have encountered during the time I’ve been using Tableau, that I’d like to see a fix for at some time in the future. These are related to dashboard building, formatting etc. but nothing that I can’t live without. On the other hand, I really wish Tableau would offer native connectors for social media platforms or advertising tools such as Google Campaign Manager/Bid Manager or Adobe Advertising Cloud.

I really wish Tableau would offer native connectors for social media platforms or advertising tools

There’s also a feature that I used with a different data viz tool, where you were able to set up a custom data source based on an Excel file and you were given an option to automatically update the data based on scheduled report extracts sent to a custom email address that was set up for that specific data connection via the platform. This was extremely useful so I hope something similar will find its place in future Tableau releases.

Michael: You are an avid calligrapher. Our late aunt did this and I was amazed at how beautiful cards we received from her were addressed. How did you develop your skills as a calligrapher or did this come naturally for you?

Kasia: I can’t really remember how and when exactly I got so interested in calligraphy but it’s definitely a big part of my life now! I love how I can sit down, relax, listen to the nib scratching on the paper and just reset. I actually practice modern calligraphy which is probably very different from what your aunt did. Modern calligraphy is more liberal and does not adhere to many rules of traditional calligraphy. It allows for a lot of freedom and, for me personally, it is an amazing outlet for my creative expression. I have an Instagram account where you can see some of my work (link)  but I tend to keep the majority of it to myself as I am by no means a pro (at least not yet!).

Michael: What is next on your “To Do” list? What can the Tableau community expect to see from you in the near future?

Kasia: I don’t have too many projects in my Tableau Public portfolio yet so I am definitely aiming to change it this year. I have a few ideas in my mind that focus on sustainability and environmental issues. One of the topics I was thinking about is around smog- the polluted air which is a mixture of fog and smoke. It is a very hot topic (for all the wrong reasons!) here in Poland but I’m not sure people around the world realize the full extent to which this phenomenon is negatively impacting human health and well-being. Thus, I hope I’ll be able to capture the essence of this issue in one of my future vizzes.

However, next in the queue is a viz focusing on space exploration. I have a pretty cool idea how to visually present the data for this topic and I feel like I can’t really move on with any other projects unless I validate whether my crazy design ideas are even possible! Keep your eyes peeled!

Tableau Public

Link: https://public.tableau.com/profile/kasia.gasiewska.holc#!/

Source: –, Use-of-Force Infographic, National Police Foundation, 2016, https://www.policefoundation.org/general-resources/use-of-force-infographic/.

READY TO TEST IN BETA 1

• Vector Tile Maps – Tableau is bringing vector tile background maps to Tableau Desktop and Server. Maps will look sharper and feel smoother than ever before, as you pan, zoom in, and zoom out to explore your geospatial data. Enjoy updated dark, normal, and light default styles, ACS demographic data, and for Desktop, new map styles and layers available right out of the box.
  
• Parameter Actions – You now have the ability to visually change a parameter’s value. Use parameter actions to drive reference lines, calculations, filters, and SQL queries simply by interacting with marks on a viz, bringing visual interactivity to your data like never before.
  
• Replace Worksheet – You can now replace an existing worksheet in a dashboard with a new worksheet from the sheet list, with a single click. Dashboard spacing, dimensions, and aspect ratios are all smartly preserved, allowing for a more delightful and precise authoring experience.
  
• Show & Hide Dashboard Containers – Maximize screen real estate with the flexibility to toggle between visible or hidden for any floating container on your dashboard. Streamline what content viewers see, such as customizing instructions, filters, or legends to be hidden when they are no longer useful.
  
• Ask Data – The foundation of conversational analytics is here with the ability to add, remove, or replace phrases through follow-up questions. With the ability to create multiple sheets, you can now build full dashboards from Ask Data generated vizzes. Add calculations, such as the sum, difference, and the ratio of two measures, on the fly.
  
• Native PostgreSQL Spatial Support – Customers with a PostgreSQL+PostGIS database can now use spatial data stored in those tables. Perform more advanced spatial analysis with the ability to leverage the spatial operations supported by the database.
  
• LeftNav, Favorites, and Recents – A new left navigation brings easier access to key pages and content in Tableau Server and Online. Find your favorite and recent content, including projects and Prep flow, at the top.
  
• New Product Languages – See and understand data in your local language. All Tableau products are now available in localized versions for Traditional Chinese and English (UK).
  
• Secure TabPy Connections – With TabPy, users can plug Python scripts directly into visualizations, and dynamically modify the results. With secure connections for TabPy, users can specify an SSL certificate on the TabPy and Tableau Desktop/Server to secure connections over HTTPS. Now TabPy can be used in scenarios where the data being passed to and from Python requires secured connections.
  
• Local Authentication Security – Local Authentication is the most basic Authentication method within Tableau Server. This means users are authenticated Tableau Server itself and they’re identified by their unique username and password. In Tableau 2019.2, Tableau has enhanced Password Policies, Login Rate Limiting giving you more control over the Local Authentication experience.
  
• TSM Direct Access – With this feature you can remove your admin passwords from your scripts \ automation needed to run TSM commands when the script is run on the server machine running the TSM controller.
  
• Extract Encryption at Rest – Extract Encryption at Rest is a new data security feature that allows users to encrypt their extracts on Tableau Server. Admins can enforce encryption of all extracts on their site or allow users to specify encryption for their published extracts.
  
• Stored Procedure Parameters – This feature adds a dialog, which appears when the user tries to add a stored procedure with parameters. It displays the parameters and their types as defined in the database, and let the user edit their values.
  
• Identity Based Activation – With identity-based product activations, Tableau administrators can easily reallocate licenses when teams change, activate licenses remotely at time of upgrade, and gain the visibility they need into how many licenses are being used across all product types.
  
• Data-driven alert improvements – Subscribe yourself to existing data-driven alerts. A new view shows all alerts that already exist for the viz you are viewing. Adding yourself or others is easy—just select “Add Me.”
• Export to PowerPoint improvements – You can now export stories to PowerPoint, creating a presentation-ready deck in seconds. Each story point, as you have customized in Tableau, will appear as one slide.
• Customizable reference line tooltips – You now have the option to customize tooltips for reference lines, bands, and distributions. Edit the tooltip text, or choose to disable the tooltip altogether.
• SAP Hana 2.0 Support – Now you can connect to and visualize SAP Hana 2.0 data in Tableau

FEATURES PLANNED FOR BETA 2

• Create and edit parameters in the browser – Parameters are dynamic values for use in calculations, filters, and reference lines. Now you can create and edit them in the browser and stay in the flow of your analysis.
• Spatial calculations support: MakeLine – You can now easily create two-point origin-destination maps, perfect for making flight maps of airline routes.
• Spatial calculations support: MakePoint – You can now turn latitude/longitude values from text files, Excel, or any data source into spatial fields and use them in spatial joins. With MakePoint, you can spatially enable text files and excel spreadsheets, making it easier to spatially aggregate your data.
• Create and save private custom views as a Viewer – Now as a Viewer, you can save private, custom views in dashboards you care about, filtered to the information you want to see. Jump back in and get the information you need, quickly and easily every time.
• Bio-metric sign-in for Tableau Mobile – Sign in once and then rely on touch ID and bio-metrics for future authentication. Use with long-lived tokens for an additional layer of security.
• Connector improvements – New support for ServiceNow instances hosted on-prem and access to more Marketo tables.
• Admin views for flow resource governance – See and understand your flow resourcing needs with admin views of flow runs. Know when you need to put more resources toward concurrently running flows.
• New Tableau home screen – Arrive to a new home page on Tableau Server and Online that displays personally relevant content upfront. Get quick access to favorites and recents, and discover new content through popular views. Additionally, a welcome screen will walk new users through relevant actions based on their role.
• Site start page – Admins for Tableau Server and Online can now set a start page for the entire site, controlling where all users land when signing-in.
• Show/hide sort controls – Authors can now preserve the sort order they’ve set on their worksheet by disabling the ability to one-click sort. Rest assured that end-users are always interacting with your data as you intended, for the best dashboard experience.

Note: These features are subject to change.

Here is a link to the PDF for my presentation, How to Prepare for the Desktop Specialist Exam, that I presented last Friday at the Tableau Fringe Festival – EMEA (TFF).

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qpjxpj6fr6qorl4/TFF%20EMEA%20-%20How%20to%20Prepare%20for%20the%20Tableau%20Desktop%20Specialist%20Exam%202019-03-08%20FINAL.pdf?dl=0

Thanks again to TFF for having me as a presenter and for all the great work they do for the Tableau community. Below is a photo of our TFF EMEA London hosts (from left to right) Lorna Eden, Sarah Bartlett, and Nai Louza. Thank you all!

Readers:

As much as we bemoan Pie Charts, they are part of our data visualization world. Thursday, March 14th is Pi Day (3.14). Here is a fun infographic that provides some information about Pi as well as how it related to Pie.

Enjoy!

Michael

Source: Tony, Belated Happy Pi Day Post – Infographic, guysandgoodhealth.com, March 15, 2015, https://guysandgoodhealth.com/2015/03/15/belated-pi-day-post-infographic/.

Candra McRae Bio

Candra McRae, a Seattle native and recent Columbus, GA transplant, is the founder and CEO of Lumodis, a data analytics and optimization testing consulting firm. Previously, she was the Executive Director of Analytics & Insights at Ramsey Solutions and cut her teeth in analytics at Deloitte Consulting. She received her master’s from the University of Georgia and BA from the University of Washington. In her free time, she likes to travel, discover new restaurants, and hang out with her husband Kevin and shih tzu Mimi.

Her path into analytics and experimentation was a bit windy and unconventional.  Her academic training has little to do with her chosen profession and math was always something she had to really work at to understand.  So, choosing a career where math is one of the main currencies seems odd.  However, she feels like this has been a ‘secret sauce’ in her career because she is able to break down of math and statistics in a ‘cookies on the bottom shelf’ kind of way that helps her communicate complicated topics in a relatable way to folks where math isn’t necessarily a love language. 

She chose analytics and experimentation because it’s challenging, allows her to investigate and utilize intellectual curiosity, and you can see tangible outcomes from the work.  She’s passionate about helping people understand their data & solve problems with a little math, creativity, and sweat equity.

Michael: Hello Candra. I absolutely loved your presentation at the Tableau Fringe Festival – EMEA last week. Early in your presentation, you noted that our attention span has significantly decreased in the past 19 years. What do you attribute this to?

Candra: I believe a large chunk of the drop can be attributed to the increased digitalization of our lifestyles, which increase the number of things competing for our attention compared to 19 years ago.  From the constant notifications on your phone telling you that you have a meeting in 10 minutes, 5 unread text messages, an insane number of new emails, and are falling behind your move goal for the day.  If it’s not your phone, it’s your watch, your Google Home/Alexa, pop up ads in your browser, social media, etc.  This isn’t to say anything about how our offline lives have become a little bit more complicated (e.g., higher number of extracurricular activities for your kids) that takes us space in our thoughts.    

Michael: You are the Founder and CEO of lumodis. Can you tell us a little bit about your company and the kinds of services you offer in the business intelligence and analytics space?

Candra: I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur – the desire to leave a legacy for future generations, being my own boss and the high stakes of whether or not you added real value to someone else determined if you ate or not was always appealing to me.  So, after 12 successful years in corporate America and a couple of years of doing projects on the side, I took every bit of faith in my ability to be successful that I could muster and bottled up the encouragement from family, colleagues and industry peers, and started Lumodis in July 2018. 

Lumodis is a boutique consulting firm that specializes in analytics (from reporting to machine learning) and optimization testing (from hypothesis generation and prioritization to building out tests).  Our broad range of services can meet clients where they are – regardless of whether they are just getting started or they have established analytics or experimentation programs and just want to go higher.  In addition to a lot of technical depth, Lumodis is adept in executive strategy and program management.  I think what makes us successful is we’re bottom-line focused and drive forward straight-forward, sustainable solutions that doesn’t require an army of consultants to update or understand. 

Michael: You were a presenter at TC18 last year. Your topic was Deploying Tableau Online using a phased approach for SMBs. As part of your presentation, you discussed “Know what you are looking for” regarding selecting a BI & Analytics tools. Can you discuss your recommendations for evaluating BI & Analytics tools?

Candra: First, assemble a collaborative, cross-functional crew to be the evaluation team.  It shouldn’t be just IT or just analytics – but analytics, IT, data engineering (if you have it).  That way, everyone’s perspective and challenges are accounted for and it makes the internal conversations around the tool when it’s time to procure go by a lot faster and drama-free. 

Second, understand what’s important to your organization.  If you don’t know where to start, I would start with the following:

• Ease of Use: Can a person off the street be able to connect to data and build something useful with the tool
• Extensive Native Integrations: Right out of the box – can you connect to data sources with just a click or do I need to rely on your dev team to build a whole bunch of custom connectors that need to be maintained forever
• Advanced Analytics: Reporting and dashboards are nice, but can you utilize the tool for more advanced stuff like geo-spatial analysis or predictive analytics
• Security: Can I provision access to the data and related views at whatever level you deem appropriate?  Also, is my data safe in the cloud?
• Total Cost of Ownership: How much does having this tool REALLY cost once you factor in administration, productivity, ancillary teams that need to support it, etc?

YouTube link to presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZN1Q-05d2M&t=0s&list=PL_qx68DwhYA_NN2iHc9hdIRSQl9FOIm1t&index=275

Michael: Can you discuss your phased recommendation for implementing Tableau in an organization? Can you also provide best practices or tips?

Candra: Not every business can afford to spend a lot of money at once on a BI platform – especially if their awareness of the benefits is just from the sale’s pitch.  Sometimes, you must give a business a chance to dip their toe in the water – experience the benefits, then expand.  So, what a phased approach to implementing Tableau can look different depending on a business’ budget, tolerance for change, and/or data maturity. 

It can be a couple of desktop licenses and a combination of Tableau Explorer and Reader licenses (I’m not a fan of Reader due to the version control challenges and its reliance on manual refreshes– but it’s a free way to distribute Tableau content).  Or, it could be adopting a couple of desktop licenses and getting 100 Tableau Viewer licenses – then scaling the license count as demand and content grows until everyone has Tableau at their fingertips and Tableau is embedded in the data strategy for the company. 

Michael: You also presented at the Nashville Analytics Summit 2018 last year. Your topic was Avoid the Blank Stare: How to Tell Great Stories with Data.

How can we tell great stories with our data?

Candra: Telling great stories with data is half art, half science – but the one of the most important keys is knowing your audience.  This will tell you where you need to start, how you need to tell the story, and what they actually care about.  After figuring out your audience, answering the 5 Ws is critical to keeping their attention and not venturing into data throw up land

• What are we talking about?
• What did you find?
• Why do I care?
• What should I do?
• What are my next steps?

Make the answers to each of these questions so clear and concise that someone off of the street without a lot of context would be able to follow.  Allow your audience to exercise some intellectual curiosity on the content, but do not allow so much space and ambiguity as to allow unsupervised thinking or confusion derail the major themes and adoption of the insights. 

Also, leverage pre-attentive processing in the way you visualize data by making the most efficient parts of the brain do some of the explanations for you.  In other words, be judicious in the use of position, color, size, and shapes so that people can more easily understand what they’re seeing.  Avoid massive data tables, which can be hard to discern patterns and meaning without a lot of explanation. 

Finally, save technical explanations for your peers.  Yes, a conversation about Bayesian probabilities and a code walk-through is interesting, just not to executives.  It’s probably a guaranteed way of losing your audience to their phones or thoughts on what’s for lunch.  Executives just need to know what’s going on in their business and what to do about it – as quickly as possible.  So, focus on outcomes, but have details available should specific questions come up.

Michael: What is next on your “To Do” list? What can the Tableau community expect to see from you in the near future?

Candra: Hmm… I’m trying to balance my love for and active practice of data viz with my love for data science (Kaggle practice competitions) equally – so we’ll see what happens.  I wish there was more time in a day because I want to do #allthethings.  But, off the top of my head

• Maintain consistent participation in #MakeoverMonday and #WorkoutWednesday. 
• Join one or two more community projects.  There are so many good community projects out there (#VizforSocialGood, #projectheathviz, #sportsvizsunday, and the Tableau prep one). 
• Create more data vizzes on social justice topics to increase awareness.
• Providing feedback more frequently, to more people.  I always shy away from this on Twitter (unless someone specifically asks) because data viz is like art and something that is purely throw away to one person can be the best thing since sliced bread to others.  But, I think feedback helps the community thrive – especially from someone that has been on both sides of the table (analyst and executive). 
  

Tableau Public

Link: https://public.tableau.com/profile/candra4181#!/

Source: O’Grady, Stephen, The RedMonk Programming Language Rankings: January 2019, redmonk.com, March 20, 2019, https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2019/03/20/language-rankings-1-19/

Back in December, I posted a couple of blogs about Data Scientists (the links are here and here). The first post discussed what a Data Scientist was, and the second post discussed the skills a Data Scientist needs to have. I thought this chart, created by Stephen O’Grady and Rachel Stephens from RedMonk.com, would be helpful for those folks considering what programming languages would be best to learn to help advance their careers. In addition, IT departments will find this helpful as their evaluate programming languages for future adoption.

Mr. O’Grady noted that these charts are a continuation of the work originally performed by Drew Conway and John Myles White late in 2010. While the specific means of collection have changed, the basic process remains the same: they extracted language rankings from GitHub and Stack Overflow, and combined them for a ranking that attempts to reflect both code (GitHub) and discussion (Stack Overflow) traction. The idea is not to offer a statistically valid representation of current usage, but rather to correlate language discussion and usage in an effort to extract insights into potential future adoption trends.

RedMonk’s Current Process

The data source used for the GitHub portion of the analysis is the GitHub Archive. RedMonk queried languages by pulling request in a manner similar to the one GitHub used to assemble the 2016 State of the Octoverse. Their query is designed to be as comparable as possible to the previous process.

• Language is based on the base repository language. While this continues to have the caveats outlined below, it does have the benefit of cohesion with our previous methodology.
• They excluded forked repos.
• They used the aggregated history to determine ranking (though based on the table structure changes this can no longer be accomplished via a single query.)

For Stack Overflow, RedMonk collected the required metrics using their data explorer tool.

Caveats Noted by RedMonk

• To be included in this analysis, a language must be observable within both GitHub and Stack Overflow.
• No claims are made here that these rankings are representative of general usage more broadly. They are nothing more or less than an examination of the correlation between two populations RedMonk believes to be predictive of future use, hence their value.
• There are many potential communities that could be surveyed for this analysis. GitHub and Stack Overflow are used here first because of their size and second because of their public exposure of the data necessary for the analysis. RedMonk encourages interested parties to perform their own analyses using other sources.
• All numerical rankings should be taken with a grain of salt. RedMonk rank by numbers here strictly for the sake of interest. In general, the numerical ranking is substantially less relevant than the language’s tier or grouping. In many cases, one spot on the list is not distinguishable from the next. The separation between language tiers on the plot, however, is generally representative of substantial differences in relative popularity.
• In addition, the further down the rankings one goes, the less data available to rank languages by. Beyond the top tiers of languages, depending on the snapshot, the amount of data to assess is minute, and the actual placement of languages becomes less reliable the further down the list one proceeds.
• Languages that have communities based outside of Stack Overflow such as Mathematica will be under-represented on that axis. It is not possible to scale a process that measures one hundred different community sites, both because many do not have public metrics available and because measuring different community sites against one another is not statistically valid.

With that, here is RedMonk’s first quarter plot of Programming Language Rankings for 2019.

Besides the above plot, which can be difficult to parse even at full size,
RedMonk also offered the following numerical rankings of the top 20 programming languages. RedMonk noted that this run produced several ties which are reflected below (they are listed out here alphabetically rather than consolidated as ties because the latter approach led to misunderstandings).

1 JavaScript
2 Java
3 Python
4 PHP
5 C#
6 C++
7 CSS
8 Ruby
9 C
10 Objective-C
11 Swift
12 TypeScript
13 Scala
14 Shell
15 Go
15 R
17 PowerShell
18 Perl
19 Haskell
20 Kotlin

RedMonk noted that there was little movement within their Tier 1 languages compared to their previous ranking. Generally speaking, the top ten to twelve languages in these rankings tend to be relatively static, with changes both rare and minor in nature. While the landscape remains fantastically diverse in terms of technologies and approaches employed, including the variety of programming languages in common circulation, code written and discussion are counting metrics, and thus characterized by gradual growth or increase. This makes growth for new languages tougher to come by the higher they ascend the rankings – which makes any rapid growth that much more noticeable.

For additional details regarding these rankings, please visit RedMonk’s web site. I provide the link here.

Marc Reid Bio

Marc Reid is an Independent Tableau Developer based in London helping clients make the most of Tableau.

Marc has a software engineering and business analysis background but more recently studied for MSc in Business Intelligence to focus his career in the area of data and analytics.  He went on to join The Information Lab’s Data School programme where he developed his Tableau and Alteryx skills, learning from some of the best practitioners in the field.

Marc posts regularly on his data visualization blog, datavis.blog, and can also be found on Twitter and Linked In.

Outside of work, Marc enjoys travel and photography.

Questions

Link: https://datavis.blog/2019/03/10/show-hide-containers/

Michael: Hello Marc. I really like the creative examples you have on your https://datavis.blog/ and have created using Tableau Desktop v2019.2 Beta. In particular, I personally have an immediate need for the use case for the toogle help screen you created.

Can you discuss a bit, for my readers, what motivated you to create this feature and how you did it?

Marc: Hi Michael.  I’d seen this type of feature appear more frequently in websites – popups that guide you, as a first time user, through the site, its features, where to find what you need etc. – and I thought this would be very helpful for a first time user of a dashboard so they can get the most value from it in the shortest time – like a quick-start guide. 

I frequently add text instructions to a dashboard, but it’s hard to make it so prominent without it being distracting (if the text is always there).  The nice thing about these overlays is, once you’ve read and understood the information, you can just switch it off, so there is no ongoing distraction away from the charts.

With the introduction of Show/Hide Containers, the implementation becomes fairly straightforward.  I took a screenshot of the dashboard and pasted it into PowerPoint, where I then overlayed the arrows and text I needed.  Then I deleted the screenshot of the dashboard and saved the remaining arrows and annotation as an image, which could then be brought into Tableau inside a floating container.  The magic ‘toggle button‘ is then added to the container which allows the container to be hidden and shown with a simple click.

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=10&v=QJ7euzd9bZc

Link: https://datavis.blog/2019/03/17/popup-charts/

Michael: Another Tableau Desktop v2019.2 Beta example you show on your blog is the ability to create Popup Charts. Can you discuss this new feature a bit and how you created this using Tableau Desktop?

Marc: A nice attribute of the new container toggle buttons is that they behave like other dashboard objects, so you can insert them into another container and then add another toggle button to that ‘outer’ container – so you then have nested toggle containers!

This allows you to simulate menu and sub-menu functionality, which is kind of what I did here – so clicking on the spanner icon expands a menu of options, then clicking on each option (e.g., color) then reveals a sub-menu of options (e.g., different colors).  This image shows the linkage between buttons and the containers they control:

The Parameter Actions feature allows you to update the value of a parameter dynamically by passing a value to it that is sourced from the marks in the view.  This is quite a powerful feature as it opens up all kinds of opportunities for user interaction, making selections, dynamic reference lines etc.  Set Actions, from 2018.3, had already opened up many of these options (see @datavizlinds great work on that front) and Parameter Actions are definitely a great addition to the toolbox.

The nice thing about parameters is that they are global to the workbook, so they can be accessed from any worksheet regardless of what data source is used, as well as from simple text boxes and worksheet titles so, pretty much anywhere! 

It also means you can use one data source to hold the values you want to use to populate your parameter(s) and another data source with your actual data:

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=NLTddomk1Po

Michael: You are an Independent Consultant. Can you tell my readers the kinds of services you offer?

Marc: My focus is on Tableau – building dashboards, promoting data visualization best practice, managing data sources and user access, and helping clients to clarify their requirements and focus on the underlying questions they are trying to answer.  I’ve also worked with other tools such as Alteryx and SQL for data preparation and cleaning and generally exploring the data and getting the structure right for Tableau.

Michael: Can you tell us three of your favorite Tableau Desktop tips and tricks?

Marc:

1) When using a discrete pill on the color shelf in a highlight table, the colors can overlap into surrounding cells when you increase the size of the square.  To stop this, you can add another discrete pill, which can just be two quotes (“”), to both Rows and Columns.  For full details see Ryan Sleeper’s blog post here: https://playfairdata.com/3-ways-make-handsome-highlight-tables-tableau/

Before

After

2) When working on a ‘busy’ dashboard with lots of worksheets and actions, it can be easy to trigger, for example, a filter actions when you’re just trying to select the sheet.  A nice tip is that you can select a worksheet on a dashboard by clicking with the mouse wheel and it wont trigger the action.  Picked that one up at The Data School.

3) This one is a built-in feature that seems less known about, at least I don’t see it used all that much.  In the tooltip you can expand the selection based on the dimensions in the view.  To make this work you need to ensure that “Allow selection by category” is switched on – the third option in this list, which shows inside the tooltip dialogue box.

In the example below, I’ve selected one cell in the table:

By then clicking the category “Office Supplies” in the tooltip, all cells that are also of category “Office Supplies” will be selected:

I could also click on “Home Office” to select all cells that are of that segment.  This becomes much more useful when working with scatter plots where it’s not always so easy to make these kinds of selections manually.

Michael: Now that you have had some time to experiment with Tableau v2019.2 Beta, what do you think is still missing in Tableau Desktop?

Marc: With the last couple of releases and the current beta, there’s been leaps forward in functionality, especially around the user experience and the ability to interact directly with the marks in the view, all of which create a more immersive and engaging experience.  

As someone who spends a lot of time in Desktop day-to-day, it’s more the little things that I sometimes feel are missing.  I’d like the dashboard building process to more fluid and less hindered by workarounds or ‘extra’ steps.  My wish list would be:  

• Copy and Paste objects
• Copy and paste formatting between objects
• Multi-select – to move multiple objects at once, or format multiple objects in one operation
• Alignment – e.g., select 3 floating text boxes and align top, or align all to the right
• Templates – e.g., for adding a logo image or standard footer text to all dashboards (similar to the “Slide Master View” in PowerPoint)
• More options to set defaults – e.g., for quick filter settings
• Ability to set borders on select sides of objects

Michael: So, I just did a presentation at the Tableau Fringe Festival – EMEA on How to Prepare for the Tableau Desktop Specialist Exam. I am now currently preparing for the Tableau Desktop Qualified Associate Exam. You are a Tableau Desktop Certified Professional. Can you discuss this exam a bit and how people can best prepare to take it?

Marc: The main advice I would give is to practice, which sounds obvious but I found that, even though the exam is 3 hours, the time did go by quickly.  Unlike the QA exam, which is multiple choice questions, the CP is 100% practical and you are using Tableau for the full duration, so being really familiar with the product and with a wide variety of techniques – filters, sorting, LODs, table calcs etc. – will help in completing the questions in less time.

How to practice?  participate in some of the many community projects that exist – there are many to chose from, and participating in different ones can help build a variety of skills.  For example, I find that  #MakeoverMonday helps me to think about dashboard design and story telling and #WorkoutWednesday helps me to practice new techniques that I may never have considered before as well as practice specific functionality – for example, Andy Kriebel has set some great workouts for table calculations – if you’d like a good challenge, have a go at this one!

Even if you’ve been using Tableau for a while, I’d also recommend going back and viewing all the intoductory free training videos that Tableau provides.  I found them to be great reminders of best practice and techniques.

Plan your time – check what sections are worth how many points and divide your time accordingly.

Finally, take a look at Simon Beaumont‘s blog post on this very topic for many more tips: https://www.vizionaryblog.co.uk/blog/so-you-ve-taken-desktop-qualified-associate-now-onto-professional 

Michael: What is next on your “To Do” list? What can the Tableau community expect to see from you in the near future?

Marc: I enjoy exploring the new features of Tableau and what possibilities they open up so I’ll likely continue to do that.

I’ve committed myself to completing every #WorkoutWednesday this year as I find it a great way to continue to develop my Tableau skills.  I‘m currently a couple of weeks behind though, so playing catch up.

I’m also keen to learn more about Tableau Server to better understand what’s happening “under the hood” when Tableau is working its magic.  To make a start on that, I recently attended the first Server Tableau User Group (or #STUG), which was a lot of fun and great to meet some of the community‘s Server experts and hear the discussions.

Another great community project Preppin‘ Data (led by Carl Alchin and Jonathan Allenby) is gaining lots of momentum and I’d like to try some of those challenges as well.

I was also catching up with podcasts recently and enjoyed listening to Chris Love share his thoughts on the Hashtag Analytics podcast with Ann Jackson and Luke Stanke around the idea of taking more time with visualization projects, digging deeper into the data and working on original content and that’s got me thinking about working on a something outside of what I normally do, so let’s see where that goes.

Tableau Public

Link: https://public.tableau.com/profile/marc.reid#!/

Readers:

I am continuing blogging about the many great and informative tweets from Malofiej27. Today, I am showcasing the graphical recordings drawn by Katherine Haugh at Malofiej27.

Katherine Haugh is an evaluator and a graphic recorder. She currently lives and works in Washington, D.C.

Ms. Haugh recently created a website which can be found here. Per her blog, she states,

My hope for this website is that it will become a platform for sharing important and relevant information in a creative way that will help and/or provide comedic relief to evaluators in their day to day work. From M&E practices for international development to useful tips for data visualization, I’ll be covering any and all topics that are of interest to me and you!

Below are some of the graphic recordings Katherine created at
Malofiej27 related to presentations she attended.

Source: Raza, Sheeraz, Martin Luther King, Jr.: Quotes And Infographic, ValueWalk.com, January 18, 2015, https://www.valuewalk.com/2015/01/martin-luther-king-jr-quotes-infographic/

Readers:

Today marks the 51st anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. I was a very young boy when he was assassinated, and remember the sadness the nation felt with his passing.

This infographic from ValueWalk.com tells the story of a lifetime of change that Martin Luther King, Jr. brought to our country.

Michael

Christina P. Gorga Bio

Christina P. Gorga is a Lead Data Visualization Designer at Booz Allen Hamilton.

Christina came from a cognitive science academic training which meandered to roles in program evaluation and data analysis for federal and nonprofit education clients, helping them unlock their data into actionable reports. Prior to joining Booz Allen Hamilton, she was a data visualization consultant at the Lewin Group, cutting her teeth in healthcare data analytics and designing Tableau dashboards for the Department of Veteran Affairs, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, and state clients.

Her other career passions are mentoring other women in data, gathering inspiration from art and urban design, and creating inclusive environments in tech where all can thrive.

Outside of work, she loves playing with her dachshund-beagle mix, Dolley Madison, all things science fiction, gastronomy, and exploring art museums.

Last August, Christina was selected as the inaugural winner of the Tableau Founders Award.

QUESTIONS

Michael: Hello Christina. First off, congratulations on being the inaugral winner of the Tableau Founders Award last summer. Can you tell my readers a little about this award?

Christina: Thank you so much, Michael. I am still very moved and humbled that I was the first individual selected to receive the award.

The award was created in honor of Michael Cristiani who was a conference and Tableau community stalwart since they began hosting annual conferences.  This was when there were maybe a couple hundred attendees and people could easily mingle around lunch tables that lead to lifelong friendships. Not only was he an advocate of the tool itself, but he was also passionate about building connections across the community. Many of those introductions lead others to collaborations and even new careers.

I am among the many in the community who was personally impacted by Michael’s mentorship. From 2016 until his passing in May 2018, he was one of my project leads and for a time, my boss. I recall many memories of him staying online with me well past dinner-time to figure out some client request with some tricky conditional formatting calculations. Not only was he steadfast in his willingness to help others learn the tool inside and out, but he was also a calm and friendly voice in my work day. I still miss him and glad I can pay it forward to others because of his influence on my career.

I am really excited to see who carries the baton this year and gets to experience Tableau conference for the first time like I did. The Tableau community is truly special when you consider how big the business intelligence and data visualization space has become. There’s no way I’m missing out on Vegas in November!

Michael: In your LinkedIn profile, you state:

My passion is applying cognitive psychology and design principles to build stronger reports and data storytelling for a range of industry clients. In turn, insight from these reports can emerge into better practices for businesses and programs.

Can you talk a little on how you apply cognitive psychology to building stronger reports and data storytelling?

Christina: Before I even open Tableau on my laptop to connect to data, I consider design options that would have the most effective ease of use and interpretation. I often go back to my doctoral work in how humans encode and perceive information. What science tells us is that often keeping it simple is best for efficient encoding. Thinking critically about color use, determining length, drawing comparisons of A vs. B, and labeling will all impact your data viz “bottom line.”

As far back to the early days of psychology as a field, we must give acknowledgement of Gestalt principles to guide better design decisions. Elijah Meeks has a great “scrolly-telling” interactive piece on Gestalt principles that you can find here: https://emeeks.github.io/gestaltdataviz/section1.html

Gestalt Proximity Example

What I recommend to others is in their design stage is to share their work with others (teammates, partners, strangers, the guy that makes your latte) and ask them “Do you understand what the main finding(s) are within 10 seconds?” If their answer is no, see if you can clear out some of the noise by using color sparingly, trying a different chart, and letting go of excess clutter. Less is more when it comes to data viz. If you want to see some great examples of ‘minimalist’ visualizations, I recommend taking a look at the Makeover Monday weekly reviews blog posts.

Link: https://www.makeovermonday.co.uk/blog/

Michael: You are a Lead Data Visualization Designer at Booz Allen Hamilton.

Can you talk a little about how you use Tableau in your day-to-day engagements?

Christina: At Booz Allen Hamilton, I am placed on projects where my data visualization and Tableau experience can be used to enhance legacy reporting or guide developer teams to build new dashboards from scratch. I assess current work and where adjustments can be made. I am not always working with Tableau everyday, but I’ve come to find it’s a fantastic wire-framing and prototyping tool to play with initial designs then iterate with my teams.

One other way I have found my expertise helpful is in identifying and communicating with stakeholders throughout the dashboard creation timeline. Some clients want to be more hands-off in the design process but I have come to find it is best to get their feedback early and often. This way we can identify and adjust requirements as needed to meet the clients’ needs while also building reports that will eventually be handed off to their daily use.

Michael: Can you tell us three of your favorite Tableau Desktop tips and tricks?

Christina: Always a fun question!

1. Using floating text boxes and setting pixel height to “1” to create lines and dividers in dashboards (Thanks to Adam Crahen and Pooja Gandhi at The Data Duo blog for that tip).
2. Copy formatting from one worksheet to another. This has saved me so much time with formatting and getting things to look consistent across my workbooks. Of course there is always “Format Workbook” from the Format drop-down.

1. See above.
2. See above.
3. Using Rank(Percentile) calculation to build quartiles and quantiles for map visualizations when you want to break out metrics into percentile buckets. Andy Kriebel’s step-by-step video is a good start on how to implement this technique. I have used this several times on client maps!

Link: http://www.vizwiz.com/2018/07/rankpercentile.html

Michael: I saw your reply to Steph Evz’s tweet about her being selected to take notes for a customer meeting given she was the only woman in the room. Now, I am a guy, and can probably be as dense as the next guy about the optics of this. I realize she was on the spot as they were with a customer, and could not make an issue of it in from of the customer, but how can we get better at not doing this? Full disclosure: I take my own notes as it is how I learn and remember.

Christina: Sure, it is not a comfortable topic for any of us to talk about but it happens more frequently to women. There is a common issue with female team members getting the office housework tasks (planning work lunches, getting coffee, taking notes) that make it much more difficult for us to focus our energy on what we do best: providing value to our clients in the form of report deliverables that make a direct impact. One way this scenario can be avoided is to have a rotation of individuals who are not given a speaking role on a call or meeting to take notes so not one person is handed that responsibility every time. I recognize that there is a time and place for everyone to get handed such tasks at some point of their career, but agreeing to asks like this constantly can often lead to the detriment of moving forward on the items that matter towards promotion. Saving the world with data does not start with a Starbucks run (although sufficient caffeination is a welcome relief!).

Michael: I saw that you are a volunteer at George Washington’s Mount Vernon. One of my degrees is in History, and I specifically focused on colonial American history and revolutionary American history. I keep a mental list of the best presidents in U.S. History and George Washington always stays in the top three.

Can you tell us about your experiences at Mount Vernon?

Christina: I volunteer at Mount Vernon through a partnership with the Junior League of Washington’s placement called the Historic Alexandria Docents. We are spread across many historic properties and museums in Old Town Alexandria but I had the privilege of getting to work at the Mount Vernon property. We receive many hours of educational training even before we set foot on the estate. Because there are so many volunteers at Mount Vernon you can choose what kind of activities you want to do! I’ve often been leaning towards costumed interpretation which means I get to dress in late 1700s clothing, take on a persona, and teach others 1700s hobbies and housekeeping tasks. Other volunteering opportunities include assistance with after-hours events like the Fall Wine Festival, archaeology digs, and working in the Presidential Library.

What is so funny about all of this is that I used to visit Mount Vernon when I was in elementary school so now my life has come full-circle. Mount Vernon really is a special place and I highly encourage visitors to the DC area to take the drive down south to visit.

Michael: What is next on your “To Do” list? What can the Tableau community expect to see from you in the near future?

Christina: It’s a huge year of changes for me! I’m going to be having my first child in less than 2 weeks from writing this piece so I have to keep my goals and aspirations in check with what I can reasonably accomplish this year. Here are a couple of 2019 “To Do”s people can expect to see from me this year:

1. Creating wearable data viz. I gave a #TFFNorthAm talk in December 2018 on mixing data with wearable art and have been putting together some initial conceptions of designs for accessories like scarves and clutches. I want data to be visible and conversation pieces for everyday wear, not just conference swag. More to come on this over the summer.
2. Playing around with other tools with Tableau. The more I get into data visualization as a career, the more I’m interested in dabbling in other tools. One of my maternity leave goals is to learn some basic Python and start integrating Adobe Illustrator for refining Tableau dashboards into static “poster” art.
3. Be an advocate. It’s one thing to be a mentor to someone – it’s another to advocate on behalf of them. I want to vocally promote in the workplace and beyond for staff I see doing an outstanding job, whether that is through email kudos or small gestures of gratitude. Putting kindness first over all other values is the way I want to frame my career and showing that consistently on my teams is one way to visibly create impact in others’ lives.

Tableau Public

Link: https://public.tableau.com/profile/christina.gorga#!/

Alicia F. Bembenek Bio

Alicia has spent her entire career teaching others and working with data. She has a PhD in social psychology and was a psychology professor and researcher before discovering her passion for the field of data visualization. Although Alicia’s roles and titles have changed over the years, her interest in both teaching and in using data to gain insights about human behavior has remained constant.

Alicia has been creating Tableau tutorials for the Evergreen Data Visualization Academy since April 2018 and also recently joined the Tessellation team in February 2019 as an Analytics Consultant and Tableau trainer. She enjoys learning new Tableau tips and tricks every day, sharing what she has learned, and connecting with others in the data visualization community.

QUESTIONS

Michael: Hello Alicia. Tell me, how did you first learn about and got interested in the field of data visualization?

Alicia: That is a story with a few twists and turns. I had been a psychology professor and researcher for a number of years. In that time I was teaching statistics, collecting and analyzing data, and creating charts for papers and presentations. But I don’t remember ever learning about data visualization specifically or being aware of design considerations.

Then I had a position helping to support a volunteer organization. I was responsible for our marketing materials and I was spending time learning about graphic design. I realized that I had a strong interest in design and a good eye for it. One day I happened to come across a list of graphic design specialties and saw those fateful words: data visualization. I was so excited to find a possible career path where I could use my skills in data and combine that with my newfound interest in design. In the fall of 2016, I took an online class with TechChange that showcased different tools for data visualization. I do remember seeing the Tableau demo in that class and making a note that I definitely wanted to explore Tableau more in the future.

I spent about six months learning on my own before taking the plunge and getting involved in the Tableau community. It was Eva Murray’s Tableau Fringe Festival talk that convinced me to start a blog, get on Twitter, and start doing #MakeoverMonday. That was May 2017. I was so nervous to post my first #MakeoverMonday viz and blog post on Twitter! But at the same time it was really exciting to take the chance and put myself and my work out there. The goal all along was to pivot into a new career in data viz. It didn’t happen overnight, but I can definitely say that #MakeoverMonday, my blog, and Twitter helped me meet more people and opened doors in my career.

Michael: Last summer you launched your web site, https://www.viztoaction.com/. This web site is a project with Shawn M. Levin (@shawnmlevin) to understand how and when data visualization can have a greater impact.

Can you tell my readers more about this project?

Alicia: The general idea of this project developed pretty quickly after first learned about data viz. I am a social psychologist by training, which means that I am interested in understanding how our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by others.

Data visualization is used to communicate and persuade. I was curious whether anyone had empirically studied how and when data viz can influence people. Do we change our beliefs after viewing data viz? Can charts change our behavior? Turns out that those questions still need to be studied. I found that there’s very little research on whether our attitudes are changed by data viz, and there was no research that I could find that studied whether viewing information in a data viz can later impact someone’s behavior. (I have since learned of a new research program currently being conducted by Melanie Herrmann at Vizzuality.)

I gave a talk for the Tableau Fringe Festival about my prediction that people would be more likely to act on the messages in our data viz if we actually give them specific instructions of what to do with the information (e.g., donate money, volunteer time, visit a website to learn more about the issue).

Shawn Levin saw my talk and also has a background in psychology. He let me know he was interested in the topic too so we decided to collaborate to create a research study to try better understand how and when data viz can have greater impact. It is an online study and we’ve been collecting data for a number of months now. We will close the study at the end of July and then report our results. We still need more participants, so if anyone reading this would like to participate the study, please click on the link I’ll share. (Go to https://bit.ly/2Ighszg.)  I will post updates and results on the viztoaction.com website.

Michael: Previously, Mike Cisneros and you gave a talk at #TC18 titled The Benefits of Finding (and Being) a Tableau Mentor. Can you talk a bit about how we can become a Tableau mentor?

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=T7uHZRKX9xA

Alicia: One good resource for making your mentoring interest known is Mark Bradbourne’s MentoringMeetup.com site. I really do think it is up to the mentee to reach out to the potential mentor though, so, as a hopeful mentor, finding other ways to be visible in the community could also be helpful. I reached out to Mike to be my mentor for a few reasons. 1) The work he was creating was both well designed and technically advanced, and 2) I enjoyed reading his blog posts and learning his perspective.  

At the time I was not working with anyone else in the data viz field, so I couldn’t reach out to a colleague for mentorship. But if you are at an organization with other data viz folks, maybe consider setting up a mentoring program.

I believe that the mentor and the mentee should take time for a “get-to-know-you” meeting before agreeing to the commitment of mentorship. For various reasons, not everyone is going to be a good fit. I outline some considerations in my blog post, How to Find a Tableau Mentor.

Michael: In the past, I have interviewed Luke Stanke and Spencer Baucke from Tessellation. Can you tell my readers how you use Tableau in your customer engagements at Tessellation?

Alicia: I am an Analytics Consultant and I lead Tableau training’s and support backlog development. I really enjoy it. I love learning new skills and sharing tips and tricks with others. I appreciate that my role is not just teaching which buttons to push. We are emphasizing effective design, the importance of soliciting feedback, and the process of iteration.  

Michael: Can you tell us some of your favorite Tableau Desktop tips and tricks?

Alicia: One trick that has really helped me recently was being able to pivot the data right in the data source. I was working with a client last week who had all of her months listed across different columns. I showed her how she could select those columns, select pivot, and quickly have the correct format of tall versus wide data. When she saw that it worked, and that it was so easy to do, she literally said, “Woah! Sick!” It cracked me up!

Michael: What is next on your “To Do” list? What can the Tableau community expect to see from you in the near future?

Alicia: I’ve got so many things on the list! The projects I’d like to focus my time on in the near future include 1) getting my Alteryx Designer Core certification and 2) submitting for the Agriculture #IronViz feeder. I’ve got a backlog list of other vizzes I’d like to create too so, if all goes well, I’ll be sharing those in the months ahead.

Tableau Public

Link: https://public.tableau.com/profile/dreamsofdata#!/

Source: Tynan DeBold and Dov Friedman, Battling Infectious Diseases in the 20th Century: The Impact of Vaccines, The Wall Street Journal, February 11, 2015, http://graphics.wsj.com/infectious-diseases-and-vaccines/

Image: https://givingcompass.org/article/washington-declares-public-health-emergency-over-measles-outbreak/

With public health officials declaring emergencies related to the current measles outbreak, I thought I would share some data visualizations related to the impact of vaccines on infectious diseases.

These heat maps were originally published in The Wall Street Journal in February 2015 in an article by Tynan DeBold and Dov Friedman. A link to the related article is provided above.

These heat maps show that the number of infected people, measured over 70-some years and across all 50 states and the District of Columbia, generally declined after vaccines were introduced.

The heat maps below show number of cases per 100,000 people.

Tableau 2019.2 Beta 2 is now available!

Tableau Software just announced that Tableau 2019.2 Beta 2 is now available on their beta site. Check out the new features in this final beta release (which means we should be seeing v2019.2 GA real soon, I hope!).

You can join Tableau’s Pre-Release program at https://prerelease.tableau.com where you can download Tableau 2019.2 Beta 2 and access the test scenarios and feature documentation prepared for you to use during your Beta 2 testing.

Here is a list of features available in Tableau v2019.2 Beta 2.

• Parameter Actions Beta 2 Update – You now have the ability to visually change a parameter’s value. Use parameter actions to drive reference lines, calculations, filters, and SQL queries simply by interacting with marks on a viz, bringing visual interactivity to your data like never before.

In Beta 2, Tableau is enhancing Parameter Actions with a new option that lets you visually aggregate multiple values and assign the output to a parameter.

With this improvement, you can now interactively retrieve selection summary statistics/values with zero calculations!

• LeftNav, Favorites and Recents Beta 2 Updates – A new left navigation brings easier access to key pages and content in Tableau Server and Online. Find your favorite and recent content, including projects and Prep flow, at the top.

Make This My Start Page

Navigate to your Favorites page.

Set this as your start page.

• Ask Data – Multiple Sheets – In Tableau 2019.2 Beta 2 you can now add multiple sheets within the Ask Data experience. Similar to the current Tableau pattern, simply click on the add sheet icon on the bottom of the screen.
  
• Tableau Prep Conductor – In Tableau 2019.2 server admins have the control to allow end users to see the list of safe locations in Tableau Prep Builder, so they know what locations to use.
  
• New Tableau home screen – Arrive to a new home page on Tableau Server and Online that displays personally relevant content upfront. Get quick access to favorites and recents, and discover new content through popular views. Additionally, a welcome screen will walk new users through relevant actions based on their role.
  
• Identity Based Activation – With identity-based product activations, Tableau administrators can easily reallocate licenses when teams change, activate licenses remotely at time of upgrade, and gain the visibility they need into how many licenses are being used across all product types.
  
• Site start page – Admins for Tableau Server and Online can now set a start page for the entire site, controlling where all users land when signing-in.
  
• Create and edit parameters in the browser – Parameters are dynamic values for use in calculations, filters, and reference lines. Now you can create and edit them in the browser and stay in the flow of your analysis.
  Check out the Create Parameters documentation.
  
• Drop Field Menu on the Web – Now you can Right Click + Drag to get the Drop Field menu to change field aggregation when working in Web Authoring.
  
• Pivotal Greenplum Spatial Support – When using spatial data from Pivotal Greenplum you now will be able to see the field when preparing the data, drop the field on to the viz to see the data, and use Custom SQL and RAWSQL to leverage spatial operations supported by the database.
  
• Spatial calculations support: MakePoint & MakeLine – You can now easily create two-point origin-destination maps, perfect for making flight maps of airline routes. Also, with MakePoint, you can spatially enable text files and excel spreadsheets, making it easier to spatially aggregate your data.

Using MakePoint

1. Using a data source containing custom Latitude and Longitude fields.
2. Create a new Calculated Field.
3. Type out and insert the desired fields : MAKEPOINT([Latitude],[Longitude])

4. Click Ok, double click the newly created Calc pill to create a new map viz or add it to the viz.

Create intersects Join Using MakePoint Calc

1. Use a data source containing custom Latitude and Longitude fields.
2. Connect to new data source / Access existing data source and switch to data source tab.
3. Ensure there are pills to Join in join area.
4. Click on the Join indicator to open Join Edit dialog.
5. Select option to “Create Join Calculation” from the Clause drop down.
6. Create a new calculation using MakePoint: MakePoint( [Lat Field] , [Long Field] ) )

• Online Help Feedback Form – The Feedback form in the Online Help website was updated for both desktop and mobile. Users will be able to see a button that will take them to the new form at the bottom of the page.
  
• Online Help for New Languages – We are adding 2 new languages, Traditional Chinese (zh_TW) and British English (en_GB) to all Tableau products (Product UI/Online Help) in 2019.2.
  
• Show/hide sort controls – Authors can now preserve the sort order they’ve set on their worksheet by disabling the ability to one-click sort. Rest assured that end-users are always interacting with your data as you intended, for the best dashboard experience.
• Create and save private custom views as a Viewer – Now as a Viewer, you can save private, custom views in dashboards you care about, filtered to the information you want to see. Jump back in and get the information you need, quickly and easily every time.
• Biometric sign-in for Tableau Mobile – Sign in once and then rely on touch ID and biometrics for future authentication. Use with long-lived tokens for an additional layer of security.
• Connector improvements – New support for ServiceNow instances hosted on-prem and access to more Marketo tables.
• Admin views for flow resource governance – See and understand your flow resourcing needs with admin views of flow runs. Know when you need to put more resources toward concurrently running flows.

Note: These features are subject to change.

Source: Graphic News, https://www.graphicnews.com/

Image: ABC News, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-16/notre-dame-cathedral-paris-engulfed-by-fire-roof-collapses/11018158

Readers:

Yesterday was a heartbreaking day. A catastrophic fire engulfed the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, gutting and destroying the landmark’s spire.

I was fortunate to visit the cathedral back in 2013, and, like the rest of the world, am sadden by this event. But, France will rebuild the cathedral for future generations to enjoy it as much as we have.

I wanted to share a few infographics that were published by Graphic News related to the fire. A link to their web site is provided above as they add additional content over the days ahead.

Stay strong, Paris!

Michael

Check out my Tableau Fringe Festival – EMEA presentation on preparing for the Tableau Desktop Specialist Exam now on YouTube.

Here is the link.

Also, check out the other great TFF – EMEA presenter’s videos here.

Readers:

Over a decade or so ago, I worked for the Walt Disney Company. I remember my very first day, walking through the Burbank Studio campus to HR orientation, I teared up as I was in disbelief that I was actually working for the company that I considered my dream job. I was walking in the same steps that Walt walked.

In the HR orientation room, they had mapped out on the wall all of the companies that Disney owned. I was surprised how many companies were owned by Disney back then (e.g., ESPN, ABC). Boy, have things changed since then!

I recently read a blog by Jacob Siegal where he shows an extensive infographic of all of the companies that Disney owns. NOTE: Source reference provided at the end of this post.

Below is a screenshot snippet of what I believe my old group is now called. Back then, it was the Disney Interactive Media Group.

Disney recently acquired 21st Century Fox and I have shown two screenshots below all of the companies that entails.

Disney’s acquisition of Marvel has provided a comprehensive group of movies around their superhero properties, and Avengers: Endgame could end up being the #1 money earner of all time by the end of summer.

Of course, most people are familiar with Disney acquiring Lucasfilm several years ago. Here is what they acquired for a few billion dollars or so.

I had always thought Disney would be my last job. But sometimes fate (or God) have other plans for you. My wife was diagnosed with cancer, which required me to return to Arizona. Thankfully, the cancer is gone and she has made a full recovery.

I have put the entire infographic in my Dropbox. The link to it is provided below.

Dropbox Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ipqlth27lbiykbd/companies-disney-owns.jpg?dl=0

With Disney owning so many companies, it truly is a small world after all.

Regards,

Michael

Source: Siegal, Jacob, See every company that Disney owns collected in a single, enormous map, Boy Genus Report, April 18, 2019, https://bgr.com/2019/04/18/every-company-disney-owns-fox-marvel-espn/.

Source: Sole-Smith, Virginia, What Is the Point of a Period?, Scientific American, May 2019, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-point-of-a-period/

In an excellent article in Scientific American, Virginia Sole-Smith discusses age-old taboos against menstruation which have led to a lack of research on how women’s cycles work, resulting in serious consequences for their health.

In their quest to bring reproductive freedom to women, scientists figured out how to supplant periods long before they tried to understand why they work the way they do.

Sole-Smith notes in her article, “Menstruation is essential to human reproduction and therefore survival. It is also one of the biological processes that makes us special because humans, chimpanzees, bats and elephant shrews are among the only animals on earth that go through it. The vast majority of mammals signal fertility through estrus, the period when females are ovulating and dis­play their sexual receptivity via genital swelling, behav­ioral changes or pronounced alterations in body odor. The female human body, however, conceals this critical window. Instead our most visible sign of potential fertility is menstrual blood, which, ironically, appears after the fertile period has closed. The endometrial lining of the uterus thickens over the course of a woman’s cycle as her estrogen level rises. If none of the eggs she releases at ovulation joins with a sperm and implants in that lining as a fertilized zygote, then levels of estro­ gen and another hormone called progesterone drop, triggering the uterus to shed the thickened endometri­ um so it can start fresh in the next cycle.”

I wanted to share one of the data visualizations from her article depicting the menstrual cycle. The dataviz shows time (28 days), thickness of the uterine endometrial lining, concentration of hormones released by the ovaries, the ovulatory cycle, and concentration of hormones that stimulate the ovaries over the 28 day cycle.

Sole-Smith’s article is important because it addresses a topic we tend to avoid in society, how a period has been perceived culturally and historically, the cause and effect of the introduction of birth control, and finally, how men have historically controlled the discussion and funding of research surrounding the menstrual cycle and women’s heath in general.

I highly encourage you to purchase a copy of this issue of Scientific American (May 2019), and read this important article.