Data-Ink Ratio Animation and How to Apply it in Tableau
In his 1983 book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Edward Tufte introduced the concept of the data-ink ratio in data visualization. In...Read More
Data Tips & Tutorials
How to Make Unit Histograms / Wilkinson Dot Plots in Tableau
Unit histograms, or Wilkinson dot plots, show distributions of individual data points instead of bucketing them into bins like traditional histograms....Read More
How to do “Button Swapping” in Tableau
You’ve likely heard of sheet swapping in Tableau; a well-known tactic that allows your users to choose what type of chart is shown on a view. With...Read More
May the 4th Be with You Sale at Playfair Data TV
We have been helping people become “Tableau Jedi” through our weekly blog posts and video tutorials for years, so we thought what better way to...Read More
Tableau Tip: How to Automatically Change Date Granularity Based on Days in Range
I’ve shared before how to let your end users change the date part of a line graph in Tableau. Then this tactic was made even better with Tableau’s...Read More
3 Creative Ways to Use Transparent Sheets to Add Context in Tableau
As of Tableau Desktop 2018.3, authors can make worksheet backgrounds transparent. This means you can float multiple worksheets on top of each other and...Read More
How to Make a Tableau Timeline when Events Overlap
I’ve shared in the past how to make a timeline in Tableau. This is one of my favorite techniques for creating a calendar and/or providing context to...Read More
Practical Tableau: Why and How to Make Customizable Jitter Plots
‘Jittering’ is a technique for separating overlapping marks on a view. By giving marks some extra room by separating them into different columns,...Read More
3 Storytelling with Color Tips to Improve Your Data Visualization
There are some fascinating parallels between storytelling and the practice of data visualization. Every story contains at least three elements: (1)...Read More