Data Analytics &

Visualization
ALL-IN-ONE

by Jack Hyman; Luca Massaron;

Paul McFedries; John Paul Mueller;
Lillian Pierson; Jonathan Reichental, PhD;
Joseph Schmuller; Alan Simon;
and Allen G. Taylor
Data Analytics & Visualization All-in-One For Dummies®
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Contents at a Glance
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Book 1: Learning Data Analytics & Visualizations

Foundations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
CHAPTER 1: Exploring Definitions and Roles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
CHAPTER 2: Delving into Big Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
CHAPTER 3: Understanding Data Lakes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
CHAPTER 4: Wrapping Your Head Around Data Science. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
CHAPTER 5: Telling Powerful Stories with Data Visualization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Book 2: Using Power BI for Data Analytics &

Visualization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
CHAPTER 1: Power BI Foundations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
CHAPTER 2: The Quick Tour of Power BI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
CHAPTER 3: Prepping Data for Visualization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
CHAPTER 4: Tweaking Data for Primetime. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
CHAPTER 5: Designing and Deploying Data Models. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
CHAPTER 6: Tackling Visualization Basics in Power BI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
CHAPTER 7: Digging into Complex Visualization and Table Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
CHAPTER 8: Sharing and Collaborating with Power BI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247

Book 3: Using Tableau for Data Analytics &

Visualization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
CHAPTER 1: Tableau Foundations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
CHAPTER 2: Connecting Your Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
CHAPTER 3: Diving into the Tableau Prep Lifecycle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
CHAPTER 4: Advanced Data Prep Approaches in Tableau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
CHAPTER 5: Touring Tableau Desktop. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
CHAPTER 6: Storytelling Foundations in Tableau. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
CHAPTER 7: Visualizing Data in Tableau. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
CHAPTER 8: Collaborating and Publishing with Tableau Cloud. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425

Book 4: Extracting Information with SQL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443

CHAPTER 1: SQL Foundations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445
CHAPTER 2: Drilling Down to the SQL Nitty-Gritty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
CHAPTER 3: Values, Variables, Functions, and Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
CHAPTER 4: SELECT Statements and Modifying Clauses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513
CHAPTER 5: Tuning Queries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539
CHAPTER 6: Complex Query Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557
CHAPTER 7: Joining Data Together in SQL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 591

Book 5: Performing Statistical Data Analysis &

Visualization with R Programming. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 605
CHAPTER 1: Using Open Source R for Data Science. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607
CHAPTER 2: R: What It Does and How It Does It. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 623
CHAPTER 3: Getting Graphical. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 651
CHAPTER 4: Kicking It Up a Notch to ggplot2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 671

Book 6: Applying Python Programming

to Data Science. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 689
CHAPTER 1: Discovering the Match between Data Science and Python. . . . . . . . . . 691
CHAPTER 2: Using Python for Data Science and Visualization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 703
CHAPTER 3: Getting a Crash Course in Matplotlib. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 721
CHAPTER 4: Visualizing the Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 739

Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 761
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
About This Book. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Foolish Assumptions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Icons Used in This Book. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Beyond the Book. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Where to Go from Here . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

BOOK 1: LEARNING DATA ANALYTICS &

VISUALIZATIONS FOUNDATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
CHAPTER 1: Exploring Definitions and Roles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
What Is Data, Really?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Working with structured data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Looking at unstructured data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Adding semi-structured data to the mix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Discovering Business Intelligence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Understanding Data Analytics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Exploring Data Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Diving into Data Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Cooking raw data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Dealing with data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Building data models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Performing what-if analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Visualizing Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

CHAPTER 2: Delving into Big Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Identifying the Roles of Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Strategy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Decision-making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Measuring. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Insight management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Reporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Other roles for data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
Grappling with data volume. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28
Handling data velocity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Dealing with data variety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Table of Contents v
 What’s All the Fuss about Data? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Welcome to the zettabyte era. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
From data to insight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Identifying Important Data Sources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Role of Big Data in Data Science and Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Defining data science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Defining machine learning engineering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Defining data engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Connecting Big Data with Business Intelligence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Analyzing Data with Enterprise Business Intelligence Practices. . . . . . 39

CHAPTER 3: Understanding Data Lakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Rock-Solid Water. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
A Really Great Lake. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Expanding the Data Lake. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
More Than Just the Water . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Different Types of Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45
Different Water, Different Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Refilling the Data Lake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Everyone Visits the Data Lake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

CHAPTER 4: Wrapping Your Head Around Data Science. . . . . . . . . . 51

Inspecting the Pieces of the Data Science Puzzle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Collecting, querying, and consuming data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Applying mathematical modeling to data science tasks . . . . . . . . . 54
Deriving insights from statistical methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Coding, coding, coding — it’s just part of the game. . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Applying data science to a subject area. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Choosing the Best Tools for Your Data Science Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Getting a Handle on SQL and Relational Databases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Knowing all about the keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Investing Some Effort into Database Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Defining data types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Designing constraints properly. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Normalizing your database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Narrowing the Focus with SQL Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Making Life Easier with Excel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Using Excel to quickly get to know your data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Reformatting and summarizing with PivotTables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Automating Excel tasks with macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

CHAPTER 5: Telling Powerful Stories with Data Visualization . . . 81

Data Visualizations: The Big Three . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Data storytelling for decision-makers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

vi Data Analytics and Visualization All-in-One For Dummies

 Data showcasing for analysts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Designing data art for activists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Designing to Meet the Needs of Your Target Audience. . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Step 1: Brainstorm (All about Eve) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Step 2: Define the purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Step 3: Choose the most functional visualization type
for your purpose. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Picking the Most Appropriate Design Style. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Inducing a calculating, exacting response. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Eliciting a strong emotional response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Selecting the Appropriate Data Graphic Type. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Standard chart graphics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Comparative graphics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Statistical plots. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Topology structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Spatial plots and maps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Testing Data Graphics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Adding Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Creating context with data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Creating context with annotations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Creating context with graphical elements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

BOOK 2: USING POWER BI FOR DATA ANALYTICS &

VISUALIZATION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

CHAPTER 1: Power BI Foundations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

Looking Under the Power BI Hood. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Posing questions with Power Query. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Modeling with Power Pivot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Visualizing with Power View. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Mapping data with Power Map. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Interpreting data with Power Q&A. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Power BI Desktop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Power BI Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Knowing Your Power BI Terminology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Capacities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Workspaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Reports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Dashboards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Navigation pane. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Power BI Products in a Nutshell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Introducing the Power BI license options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Looking at Desktop versus Services options. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

Table of Contents vii

 CHAPTER 2: The Quick Tour of Power BI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Power BI Desktop: A Top-Down View. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Ingesting Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Files or databases? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Building data models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Analyzing data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Creating and publishing items. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Services: Far and Wide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Viewing and editing reports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Working with dashboards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Collaborating inside Power BI Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Refreshing data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138

CHAPTER 3: Prepping Data for Visualization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Getting Data from the Source. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Managing Data Source Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Working with Shared versus Local Datasets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Storage and Connection Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Data Sources Oh My!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .151
Getting data from Microsoft-based file systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Working with relational data sources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Cleansing, Transforming, and Loading Your Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Detecting anomalies and inconsistencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Checking data structures and column properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Data statistics to the rescue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164

CHAPTER 4: Tweaking Data for Primetime. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

Stepping through the Data Lifecycle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .167
Resolving Inconsistencies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Replacing values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Removing rows using Power Query . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Digging down to the root cause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Evaluating and Transforming Column Data Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Finding and creating appropriate keys for joins. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Shaping your column data to meet Power
Query requirements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Combining queries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Configuring Queries for Data Loading. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Resolving Errors During Data Import. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182

CHAPTER 5: Designing and Deploying Data Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

Creating a Data Model Masterpiece. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Working with Data view and Modeling view . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Importing queries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186

viii Data Analytics and Visualization All-in-One For Dummies

 Defining data types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Handling formatting and data type properties. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Managing tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Adding and modifying data to imported, DirectQuery,
and composite models. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Managing Relationships. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Creating automatic relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Creating manual relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
Deleting relationships. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Arranging Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Sorting by and grouping by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
Hiding data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
Publishing Data Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

CHAPTER 6: Tackling Visualization Basics in Power BI . . . . . . . . . . 203

Looking at Report Fundamentals and Visualizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Creating visualizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Choosing a visualization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Filtering data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Choosing the Best Visualization for the Job. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Working with Bar charts and Column charts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Using basic Line charts and Area charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Combining Line charts and Bar charts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Working with Ribbon charts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
Going with the flow with Waterfall charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
Funneling with Funnel charts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Scattering with Scatter charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
Sweetening the data using Pie charts and Donut charts. . . . . . . . 219
Branching out with treemaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Mapping with maps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Indicating with indicators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

CHAPTER 7: Digging into Complex Visualization

and Table Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Dealing with Table-Based and Complex Visualizations. . . . . . . . . . . . 228
Zeroing in with slicers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
Tabling with table visualizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
Combing through data with matrices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
Decomposing with decomposition trees. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
Zooming in on key influencers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
Using AI Tools to Create Questions and Answers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Formatting and Configuring Report Visualizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
Applying conditional formatting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Configuring the report page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233

Table of Contents ix
 Exporting reports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
Perfecting reports for distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
Diving into Dashboards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
Configuring dashboards. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
Creating a new dashboard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
Enriching your dashboard with content. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
Pinning reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

CHAPTER 8: Sharing and Collaborating with Power BI. . . . . . . . . . 247

Working Together in a Workspace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Defining the types of workspaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
Figuring out the nuts and bolts of workspaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
Slicing and Dicing Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
Analyzing in Excel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
Benefiting from Quick Insights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
Using Usage Metric reports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Working with paginated reports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
Troubleshooting the Use of Data Lineage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
Datasets, Dataflows, and Lineage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
Defending Your Data Turf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262

BOOK 3: USING TABLEAU FOR DATA ANALYTICS &

VISUALIZATION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265

CHAPTER 1: Tableau Foundations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267

Understanding Key Tableau Terms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .268
Data source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
Data type. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Data fields. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
Dimensions and measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
Continuous versus discrete. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
Filter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
Aggregation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
Workbook and worksheet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
Getting to Know the Tableau Product Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Tableau Desktop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Tableau Prep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
Tableau Server and Tableau Cloud. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
Choosing the Right Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
Knowing What Tools You Need in Each Stage of the Data
Life Cycle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
Understanding User Types and Their Capabilities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Viewer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Explorer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Creator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284

x Data Analytics and Visualization All-in-One For Dummies

CHAPTER 2: Connecting Your Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Understanding Data Source Options. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
Connecting to Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
Making the Desktop or Prep connection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
Locating the Server and Online connections. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
Setting Up and Planning the Data Source. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
Relating and Combining Data Sources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
Working with Data Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
Knowing the advantages of relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
Seeing the disadvantages of relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
Creating relationships. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
Editing relationships. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
Moving tables to create different relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
Changing the root table of a relationship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300
Removing tables from a relationship. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
Joining Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
Understanding join types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
Setting up join clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
Creating a join . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
Joining fields that contain null values. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
Blending data from multiple sources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
Working with clipboard data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309

CHAPTER 3: Diving into the Tableau Prep Lifecycle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313

Dabbling in Data Flows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
Connecting the data dots. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
Going down the data flow pathway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
Configuring the data flow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
Going with the data flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
Nurturing a flow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
Grouping flows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
Filtering flows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
Saving Prep Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Automating flows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
Crafting published data sources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334

CHAPTER 4: Advanced Data Prep Approaches in Tableau. . . . . . 337

Peering into Data Structures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
Rows and records . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
Columns and fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
Categorizing fields. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340

Table of Contents xi
 Structuring for Data Visualization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342
Binning and histograms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
Distributions and outliers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
Pivoting with data: Tall versus wide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
Normalizing Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348

CHAPTER 5: Touring Tableau Desktop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351

Getting Hands-On in the Tableau Desktop Workspace. . . . . . . . . . . . 351
Making Use of the Tableau Desktop Menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
File menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
Data menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
Worksheet menu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
Dashboard menu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
Story menu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
Analysis menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
Map menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
Format menu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362
Server menu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
Window menu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364
Help menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
Tooling Around in the Toolbar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .365
Understanding Sheets versus Workbooks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
Renaming sheets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370
Deleting sheets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370

CHAPTER 6: Storytelling Foundations in Tableau. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371

Working with Dashboards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
Configuring the dashboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
Customizing the dashboard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
Adding objects to dashboards. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
Creating a Compelling Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
Synthesizing data through a Tableau story. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
Planning your story to perfection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
Surveying the story workspace. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385
Crafting the story. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
Formatting the story. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389

CHAPTER 7: Visualizing Data in Tableau. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391

Introducing the Visualizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
The text table. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
The heat map and highlight table. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
Maps with and without symbols. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396
The pie chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
The bar chart. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400

xii Data Analytics and Visualization All-in-One For Dummies

 The treemap. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
Circles and bubbles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
The line chart. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406
The area chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
The dual combination chart. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411
The scatter plot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412
The histogram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414
The box and whisker plot. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
The Gantt chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
The bullet chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
Converting a Visualization to a Crosstab. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419
Publishing Visualizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422

CHAPTER 8: Collaborating and Publishing with

Tableau Cloud. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425
Strolling through the Tableau Cloud Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
Evaluating Personal Features in Tableau Cloud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430
Personal Space. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430
Favorites. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432
Recents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434
Sharing Experiences and Collaborating with Others. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
Sharing content. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
Shared with Me . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436
Collections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
Explore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440

BOOK 4: EXTRACTING INFORMATION WITH SQL. . . . . . . . . 443

CHAPTER 1: SQL Foundations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445

SQL and the Relational Model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445
Sets, Relations, Multisets, and Tables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446
Functional Dependencies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
Keys. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448
Views. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
Users. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
Privileges. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
Schemas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
Catalogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
Connections, Sessions, and Transactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
Routines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453
Paths. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454

Table of Contents xiii

 CHAPTER 2: Drilling Down to the SQL Nitty-Gritty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
Executing SQL Statements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
Interactive SQL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456
Challenges to combining SQL with a host language . . . . . . . . . . . 457
Embedded SQL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457
Module language. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460
Using Reserved Words Correctly. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
SQL’s Data Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
Exact numerics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
INTEGER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
SMALLINT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
BIGINT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
Approximate numerics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
Character strings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466
Binary strings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468
Booleans. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469
Datetimes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469
Intervals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471
XML type. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471
ROW type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472
Collection types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473
REF types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475
User-defined types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475
Handling Null Values. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478
Applying Constraints. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479
Column constraints. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480
Table constraints. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
Foreign key constraints. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .483
Assertions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484

CHAPTER 3: Values, Variables, Functions, and Expressions. . . . 487

Entering Data Values. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
Row values have multiple parts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488
Identifying values in a column. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488
Literal values don’t change. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488
Variables vary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490
Special variables hold specific values. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490
Working with Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491
Summarizing data with set functions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491
Dissecting data with value functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494
Using Expressions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503
Numeric value expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503
String value expressions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503
Datetime value expressions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504

xiv Data Analytics and Visualization All-in-One For Dummies

 Interval value expressions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505
Boolean value expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506
Array value expressions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506
Conditional value expressions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 507
Converting data types with a CAST expression. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510
Row value expressions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 511

CHAPTER 4: SELECT Statements and Modifying Clauses. . . . . . . . 513

Finding Needles in Haystacks with the SELECT Statement . . . . . . . . . 513
Modifying Clauses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514
FROM clauses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514
WHERE clauses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515
GROUP BY clauses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533
HAVING clauses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535
ORDER BY clauses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 536

CHAPTER 5: Tuning Queries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539

SELECT DISTINCT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540
Temporary Tables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542
The ORDER BY Clause. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547
The HAVING Clause. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 551
The OR Logical Connective. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555

CHAPTER 6: Complex Query Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557

What Is a Subquery?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557
What Subqueries Do. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 558
Subqueries that return multiple values. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 558
Subqueries that return a single value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 560
Quantified subqueries return a single value. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563
Correlated subqueries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 566
Using Subqueries in INSERT, DELETE, and UPDATE Statements . . . . 571
Tuning Considerations for Statements Containing
Nested Queries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 574
Tuning Correlated Subqueries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579
UNION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584
UNION ALL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586
UNION CORRESPONDING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 587
INTERSECT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 588
EXCEPT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 590

CHAPTER 7: Joining Data Together in SQL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 591

JOINS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 591
Cartesian product or cross join. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 592
Equi-join . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 594

Table of Contents xv
 Natural join. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 596
Condition join. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 596
Column-name join. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597
Inner join. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598
Outer join. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 599
ON versus WHERE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603
Join Conditions and Clustering Indexes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603

BOOK 5: PERFORMING STATISTICAL DATA

ANALYSIS & VISUALIZATION WITH R PROGRAMMING . . . . 605

CHAPTER 1: Using Open Source R for Data Science. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607

Downloading Open Source R. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 608
Comprehending R’s Basic Vocabulary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 608
Delving into Functions and Operators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 612
Iterating in R. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 615
Observing How Objects Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 617
Sorting Out R’s Popular Statistical Analysis Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . 619
Examining Packages for Visualizing, Mapping, and Graphing in R. . . . 620
Visualizing R statistics with ggplot2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .620
Analyzing networks with statnet and igraph. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 621
Mapping and analyzing spatial point patterns with spatstat . . . . 622

CHAPTER 2: R: What It Does and How It Does It. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 623

The Statistical (and Related) Ideas You Just Have to Know. . . . . . . . . 624
Samples and populations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 624
Variables: Dependent and independent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 625
Types of data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 626
A little probability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 626
Inferential statistics: Testing hypotheses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 628
Null and alternative hypotheses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 628
Two types of error. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 629
Getting R. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 630
Getting RStudio. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 631
A Session with R. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 634
The working directory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 634
Getting started. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 635
R Functions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 638
User-Defined Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 639
Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 640
R Structures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 641
Vectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 641
Numerical vectors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 642
Matrices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643

xvi Data Analytics and Visualization All-in-One For Dummies

 Lists. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 645
Data frames. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 646
for Loops and if Statements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .649

CHAPTER 3: Getting Graphical. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 651

Finding Patterns. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 651
Graphing a distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 652
Bar-hopping. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 653
Slicing the pie. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 654
The plot of scatter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 654
Of boxes and whiskers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 656
Doing the Basics: Base R Graphics, That Is . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 657
Histograms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 657
Graph features. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 658
Bar plots. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 660
Pie graphs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 662
Dot charts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 662
Bar plots revisited. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 663
Scatter plots. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 666
Box plots. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 669

CHAPTER 4: Kicking It Up a Notch to ggplot2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 671

Histograms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 672
Bar Plots. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 675
Dot Charts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 676
Bar Plots Re-revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 679
Scatter Plots. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 683
Scatter Plot Matrix. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 683
Box Plots. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 686

BOOK 6: APPLYING PYTHON PROGRAMMING

TO DATA SCIENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 689

CHAPTER 1: Discovering the Match between Data

Science and Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 691
Creating the Data Science Pipeline. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 692
Understanding Python’s Role in Data Science. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .693
Considering the shifting profile of data scientists . . . . . . . . . . . . . 693
Working with a multipurpose, simple, and efficient language. . . 694
Learning to Use Python Fast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 695
Loading data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 695
Training a model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 695
Viewing a result . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 696

Table of Contents xvii

 Working with Python. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 697
Contributing to data science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 697
Getting a taste of the language. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 698
Understanding the need for indentation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 698
Using the Python Ecosystem for Data Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 699
Accessing scientific tools using SciPy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 699
Performing fundamental scientific computing using NumPy. . . . 700
Performing data analysis using pandas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 700
Implementing machine learning using Scikit-learn . . . . . . . . . . . . 700
Going for deep learning with Keras and TensorFlow. . . . . . . . . . . 701
Plotting the data using Matplotlib. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 701
Creating graphs with NetworkX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 702

CHAPTER 2: Using Python for Data Science

and Visualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 703
Using Python for Data Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 703
Sorting Out the Various Python Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 705
Numbers in Python. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 706
Strings in Python. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 706
Lists in Python. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 707
Tuples in Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 707
Sets in Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 708
Dictionaries in Python. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 708
Putting Loops to Good Use in Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 708
Having Fun with Functions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 709
Keeping Cool with Classes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 711
Checking Out Some Useful Python Libraries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 713
Saying hello to the NumPy library. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 714
Getting up close and personal with the SciPy library. . . . . . . . . . . 716
Bonding with MatPlotLib for data visualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 716
Peeking into the Pandas offering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 718
Learning from data with Scikit-learn. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .719

CHAPTER 3: Getting a Crash Course in Matplotlib . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 721

Starting with a Graph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 722
Defining the plot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 722
Drawing multiple lines and plots. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 723
Saving your work to disk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .724
Setting the Axis, Ticks, and Grids. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 725
Getting the axes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 725
Formatting the axes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 726
Adding grids. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 727

xviii Data Analytics and Visualization All-in-One For Dummies

 Defining the Line Appearance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 729
Working with line styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 729
Using colors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 730
Adding markers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 731
Using Labels, Annotations, and Legends. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 733
Adding labels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 734
Annotating the chart. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 734
Creating a legend. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 735

CHAPTER 4: Visualizing the Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 739

Choosing the Right Graph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 740
Creating comparisons with bar charts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 740
Showing distributions using histograms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 741
Depicting groups using boxplots. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 743
Seeing data patterns using scatterplots. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 744
Creating Advanced Scatterplots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 746
Depicting groups. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 746
Showing correlations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 747
Plotting Time Series. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .748
Representing time on axes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 749
Plotting trends over time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 751
Plotting Geographical Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 752
Using an environment in Notebook. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 753
Using Cartopy to plot geographic data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 754
Visualizing Graphs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 757
Developing undirected graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 757
Developing directed graphs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 759

INDEX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 761

Table of Contents xix

Introduction
E
verywhere you go in the business world, you are likely to encounter
­executives who make decisions driven by tidbits of raw data that together
tell a meaningful story. In fact, in our everyday worlds, websites and mobile
apps express data using powerful visualizations to explain complex numbers and
concepts, not extensive written passages anymore. The phrase “a picture speaks
a thousand words” rings true in the world of data analytics and visualization, and
for good reason.

Data analytics and visualization allow anyone to turn raw data into meaningful
stories and insights. You, as the analyst, act as the detective. Instead of having
to solve a mystery with clues, you are provided datasets that, if provided with
enough clarity, can answer complex questions using trend and pattern analysis.
If you review a dataset enough, you’ll inevitably have an ah-ha moment in your
interpretation quest, but if the dataset can be presented visually, you can accel-
erate your understanding like a racecar going from 0 to 100 miles per hour in
seconds.

Data analytics and visualization help you uncover creative ways to showcase data
in a manner that is both informative and engaging. Data often starts out as noth-
ing more than a bunch of jumbled numbers; turning those numbers into a story
that can influence decisions and drive change is incredibly powerful. Global enter-
prises rely on folks who have the skills you are about to embark on in this book as
a way to determine business strategies, make corporate decisions, and influence
change. If you are ready to learn these skills, you are in for a treat with this book.

About This Book

If you’ve picked up this book, you might be on a quest to piece together a whole
lot of terms being thrown around in the information economy regarding data,
the most precious tool in the information economy. Data is a business asset that
sits at the intersection of many disciplines; the resultant product from data can
be methodologies, processes, algorithms, and system outputs. To the end user
though, the end game is extracting knowledge and insights from the byproducts
of data, and taking action upon review.

Introduction 1
 Book 1 covers the foundational aspects of the data analytics and visualiza-
tion lifecycle that every user must understand to be proficient as an analyt-
ics and visualization savvy. Books 2 and 3 focus on the two leading tools in
the enterprise business intelligence market used to perform complex data
analytics and visualization tasks; Microsoft Power BI and Tableau. Books 4
through 6 cover the key programming languages used by both proprietary and
open-source data analytics and visualization platforms to extract, assess, and
visualize data at scale when commercial off-the-shelf enterprise business plat-
forms are unavailable.

This book uses the following technical conventions:

»» Bold text means that you’re meant to type the text just as it appears in the
book. The exception is when you’re working through a steps list: Because each
step is bold, the text to type is not bold.

»» Web addresses and programming code appear in monofont. If you’re

reading a digital version of this book on a device connected to the Internet,
note that you can click the web address to visit that website, like this: www.
dummies.com.

»» For command sequences in software, this book uses the command arrow.
Here’s an example that uses Microsoft Word: Click the Office button and
then choose Page Layout➪  Margins➪  Narrow to decrease the default
margin setting.

If you don’t think the book contains any conventions that need to be spelled out in
this section, discuss omitting conventions information with your editor.

To make the content more accessible, we divided it into 6 books:

»» Book 1, “Learning Data Analytics & Visualization Foundations.”

Book 1 introduces terms and fundamental concepts. You learn about big data,
data lakes, and data science, and you see how you can apply visualization
tools to create meaningful stories based on data you collect.

»» Book 2, “Using Power BI for Data Analysis & Visualization.”

Book 2 covers Microsoft Power BI, a data analysis and visualization tool used
by many large organizations. This book illustrates how you can use Power BI
to make sense of structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data, and
develop robust business analytics outputs for your organization.

2 Data Analytics & Visualization All-in-One For Dummies

 »» Book 3, “Using Tableau for Data Analysis & Visualization.”
Book 3 covers Tableau, a data analysis and visualization tool favored by
researchers and educational institutions. In this book, you discover how to
prepare data and present your findings using Tableau’s storytelling and
visualization features. You also see how to collaborate and publish your
work with Tableau Cloud.

»» Book 4, “Extracting Information with SQL.”

Book 4 describes SQL and the relational database model. You discover how
SQL is a powerful tool that nonprogrammers can use to write complex
queries to get the most out of their data, and more.

»» Book 5, “Performing Statistical Data Analysis & Visualization with

R Programming.”

Book 5 introduces the open-source R programming language. You see how

you can use R to perform statistical data analysis, data visualization, and other
data science tasks.

»» Book 6, “Applying Python Programming to Data Science.”

Book 6 describes how Python is used as a data science and visualization tool.
The book includes a “crash course” on MatPlotLib.

Foolish Assumptions
To get the most out of this book, you need the following:

»» Access to the Internet: This may sound a bit obvious. Even with the Desktop
client, an Internet connection is required in order to access datasets from
the Internet.

»» A meaningful dataset: A meaningful dataset includes at least 300 to 400

records containing a minimum of five or six columns’ worth of data.

Icons Used in This Book

Throughout this book, icons in the margins highlight certain types of valuable
information that call out for your attention. Here are the icons you’ll encounter
and a brief description of each.

Introduction 3
 Best Practice icons highlight points of common knowledge among seasoned
professionals in the data industry. If you don’t want to look like a complete new-
bie, follow the well-worn advice described in these paragraphs.

Tips point out shortcuts or essential suggestions that you can use to do things
quicker, faster, and more efficiently.

Consider these small suggestions that are quite helpful. Remember icons are like
signs on the road to suggest a potential better route.

The Technical Stuff icon marks information of a highly technical nature that you
can normally skip over. When appropriate, these paragraphs also suggest special-
ized resources you may find helpful down the road.

The Warning icon makes you aware of a common issue or product challenge many
users face. Don’t fret, but do take note when you see this icon.

Beyond the Book

In addition to the abundance of information and guidance related to data analy-
sis and visualization provided in this book, you get access to even more help and
information online at Dummies.com. Check out this book’s online Cheat Sheet. Just
go to www.dummies.com and search for “Data Analysis & Visualization All-in-One
For Dummies Cheat Sheet.”

Where to Go from Here

The book has three core themes: foundational concepts, tools, and programming
languages.

If you want to learn the essential data analytics and visualization concepts, includ-
ing learning the lingo of the land, head to Book 1.

4 Data Analytics & Visualization All-in-One For Dummies

If you’re looking to get up to speed on Microsoft’s Enterprise BI tools, head to
Book 2. Tableau, a tool used for Enterprise BI but heavily leveraged in communi-
ties where data is regulated such as banking, healthcare, insurance, and govern-
ment, head to Book 3.

The underpinning for data analytics and visualization is SQL, a querying language.
To get a crash course on SQL, which is necessary for any proprietary or open-
source data analytics and visualization platform, head to Book 4.

Finally, Books 5 and 6 are an introduction to two popular open-source program-

ming languages, R and Python. Both languages can be configured for use with
Power BI and Tableau, but are more commonly used with open-source (free)
platforms like Jupyter Notebook and Anaconda to conceive data analytics outputs
and visualizations. Unlike Power BI and Tableau, open-source tools leveraging
programming languages are used in academic settings or by analysts requiring
technologies that are data intensive.

Introduction 5
1
Learning Data
Analytics &
Visualizations
Foundations
Contents at a Glance
CHAPTER 1: Exploring Definitions and Roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
What Is Data, Really?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Discovering Business Intelligence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Understanding Data Analytics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Exploring Data Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Diving into Data Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Visualizing Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

CHAPTER 2: Delving into Big Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Identifying the Roles of Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
What’s All the Fuss about Data? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Identifying Important Data Sources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Role of Big Data in Data Science and Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Connecting Big Data with Business Intelligence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Analyzing Data with Enterprise Business Intelligence Practices. . . . 39

CHAPTER 3: Understanding Data Lakes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Rock-Solid Water. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
A Really Great Lake. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Expanding the Data Lake. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
More Than Just the Water . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Different Types of Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Different Water, Different Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Refilling the Data Lake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Everyone Visits the Data Lake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

CHAPTER 4: Wrapping Your Head Around Data Science. . . . . . . 51

Inspecting the Pieces of the Data Science Puzzle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Choosing the Best Tools for Your Data Science Strategy . . . . . . . . . 57
Getting a Handle on SQL and Relational Databases . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Investing Some Effort into Database Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Narrowing the Focus with SQL Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Making Life Easier with Excel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

CHAPTER 5: Telling Powerful Stories with Data

Visualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Data Visualizations: The Big Three . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Designing to Meet the Needs of Your Target Audience. . . . . . . . . . . 84
Picking the Most Appropriate Design Style. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Selecting the Appropriate Data Graphic Type. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Testing Data Graphics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Adding Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104