Bob Dylan – folk hero to thousands if not millions – caused a furor when he appeared at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival with ... an electric guitar! If you read about the incident you’ll discover that there was a mammoth sense of betrayal within the folk-centric fold. How could their hero embrace rock music? [...]
My problem with most infographics is that they sacrifice accuracy and clarity for whimsy and cuteness. While I understand the desire to "draw the reader" in, I believe it's critical that the information and the story not be misleading. So, imagine my delight when I thought I had found an infographic that was spot-on accurate and fun and engaging. [...]
I spend half my time as a musician and the other half as a data visualization "scientist". I love both professions but one downside shared by both professions is that I cannot listen to music nor glance at a chart without trying to figure out what is going on inside the music and inside the [...]
We begin a new feature this month where I look at some recently-published data visualizations and offer suggestions on how they can be improved. I'll start with the MASIE Center's Mobile Pulse Survey results. For those of you that don't know, The MASIE Center is a Saratoga Springs, NY think tank focused on how organizations [...]
Author’s note: Stephen Few is a bastion of data visualization excellence. I encourage all of my Tableau clients and students to purchase his books, read his blogs, and attend events where he is presenting. I also submitted an entry into the competition (you can read it here). I've been troubled by both the premise and [...]
Thoughts on Standard Business Practices, User Expectations, Tableau’s Server Pricing Model, and Appealing to the Consumer’s Inner Narcissist. In my six-plus years of using Tableau I’ve created hundreds of dashboards and thousands of interactive visualizations. In observing these creations out in the field I noticed something rather disappointing – the vast majority of people for [...]
Overview Here’s something you are welcome to try – have a friend or colleague go to a Tableau Public URL that contains multiple tabs; then see how many people realize that there is in fact more than one view / dashboard available for him/her to explore. I’ve created hundreds of dashboards with multiple tabs and [...]
Note: While the information in this blog is useful, I've discovered some better ways to perform intra-question analysis; I just haven't blogged about them yet. Feel free to nag me. January 3, 2018 update. I've written a two-part post that explores better ways to conduct intra-question analysis. Please see this post. Overview So, I thought I [...]
So, as anyone who has either taken a Tableau class with me or has read my blog posts knows, I go ballistic when I see anyone use a red/green divergent color palette. So, it's great to see people using Tableau's color-blind palette, but we need to get something straight: Dark Blue == Good, Lots Dark [...]
Overview I really am not “out to get” Texas. Yes, I have previously published a visual study tracking STDs, HIV, and AIDS in Texas, which in turn led to some blog posts on the subject, but one of the main reasons for focusing on Texas was that the data I needed were readily available and [...]
