The "Tableau Twins" Take You Beyond Show Me


At the 2019 Tableau Conference, my twin brother, Kevin Flerlage, and I gave a presentation called The Tableau Twins Take You Beyond Show Me. The goal of this presentation was to provide an overview of our “Three Pillars for Building Custom charts in Tableau”:


1) Plot X & Y Coordinates
2) Automate using Math (Trigonometry and Geometry)
3) Data Densification

We introduced these concepts then spent the remainder of the time showing the audience, in detail, how to leverage them in Tableau, building a handful of different charts along the way.

Check out the full presentation here:  Tableau Twins take you Beyond Show Me.

But, since this is a huge topic, it was a lot to cover in just one hour. Thus, this blog is meant as a companion to the presentation. Below we’re linking to a variety of other blog posts which explain these concepts in more detail.

1) Beyond “Show Me” Part 1: It’s All About the X & Y – By plotting X & Y coordinates, we can draw virtually anything in Tableau.

2) Beyond "Show Me" Part 2: Trigonometry – Through use of trigonometry (i.e. “Right Triangle Math”), we can automate the calculation of X & Y coordinates.

3) Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Radial Bar Chart? – Now that you understand how to leverage trigonometry in Tableau, we can use it to build a radial bar chart. While this is not always a great choice for most data sets, it’s a perfect example for demonstrating how to put these techniques into practice.

4) An Introduction to Data Densification – In order to draw some more advanced charts, including anything with curves, you need to understand the concept of data densification.

5) Sankey and Radar Templates – After watching the presentation, you should understand the basics of how to build sankeys and radar charts (and similar charts), but there’s no need to build these from scratch every time. Instead, use the templates we’ve provided here.
  
If you were able to attend our presentation in person, thank you so much for coming—we certainly hope that you learned something new. If not, the presentation is now available on Tableau's YouTube channel. 



And the workbook is available on my Tableau Public page

As always, if you have any questions or comments, please let us know.

Ken Flerlage, November 15, 2019


4 comments:

  1. This session was beyond amazing! I took 3 pages of notes during the session and I know I'll be rewatching it.

    I hope you two collaborate again. It was so much fun seeing you presenting together.

    Well Done!

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    1. Thanks so much!! Already talking about what we should do next year. :)

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  2. I am wondering about the LoD used in the example with the Boxing data for doing radar charts at ~32 min in the video. What is the LoD that was used for Count Skills Fixed? I have been playing with an LoD to determine angles for a radial bar chart and can't seem to get it quite right. Thanks.

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    Replies
    1. The calc is: {FIXED : COUNTD([Skill])}

      I just updated this post to include a link to the workbook (https://public.tableau.com/profile/ken.flerlage#!/vizhome/TheTableauTwinsTakeYouBeyondShowMe/Title). Feel free to download it and take it apart, as needed.

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