Tableau: Getting Started with Real Examples
This Post Is the Beginning of an in-Depth Series on Tableau—I’ll Start with an Introduction and a Real-World Example. Tableau Is a Charting System for...
This post is the beginning of an in-depth series on Tableau—I’ll start with an introduction and a real-world example. Tableau is a charting system for presenting data in an easy-to-read format. It can help you better understand your data, so you can quickly put clear insights to work. Tableau also illustrates your data in a variety of ways, so you can perfectly present your data to others. Think of it as an important tool in your business analytics toolkit.
Tableau has multiple out-of-the-box charting options. In this article, we’ll look at:
- Bar charts
- Pie charts
- Packed bubbles chart
- Box and whisker plot
(This article is part of our Tableau Online Guide. Use the right-hand menu to navigate.)
What is Tableau?
If you’ve never used Tableau, I like to explain it this way: Think of Microsoft Excel on steroids, with the power of larger and more complicated analytics packages like SAS, but without some of the complexity.
Tableau reduces the need for programming so that the layman can write custom statistics and ML functions. Tableau is intended for a wide variety of users from data analysts and data scientists to any business unit that may need quick, customizable data—especially if they aren’t data specialists.
(Certainly, more advanced projects and skillsets, like analysts and scientists, can use more sophisticated data visualization tools, like Matplotlib and Python. See more in our Data Visualization Guide.)
Tableau is a market leader
Tableau has long had a significant market share in the analytics software market. In August 2019, Salesforce acquired Tableau, kicking off a big marketing push for the product. Tableau now also takes advantage of Salesforce AI tools, like Salesforce Einstein Analytics, which is included in Tableau.
To use Tableau, you do not need to be a Salesforce user. Quite the contrary. Tableau’s strength is how it can work with so many data sources, including Microsoft Excel (thus Google Sheets), ordinary text files, JSON, Spatial files, etc., and those in the graphic below:
Chloe Bennett explores the intersection of pop culture, streaming entertainment, digital trends, and contemporary lifestyle. Her weekly commentary reaches thousands of culture enthusiasts.
