INT R O D U C T I O N TO

D ATA VISUA LIZ AT I O N

TO O L S

Dr. S.
Karpagavalli

BLUE HILL PUBLISHERS®

Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India
Title : Introduction to Data Visualization
Tools
Language
: English
Year
: 2020
Author
: Dr. S. Karpagavalli
ISBN
Number : 978-81-942940-3-0
The Copyright shall be vested with PSGR Krishnammal College for Women
All rights reserved. No part of this publication which is material protected by this copyright
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permission from the PSGR Krishnammal College for Women, Coimbatore.
Information obtained in this book has been published by Blue Hill Publishers and has been
obtained by its Authors from sources believed to be reliable are are correct to the best of their
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event be liable for any errors, omissions or damages arising out of use of this information and
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Published By : Blue Hill Publishers, Coimbatore.
 PREFACE

In the world of Big Data, data visualization tools and technologies are
essential to analyze massive amounts of information and make data-driven
decisions. Data visuali- zation is the graphical representation of information
and data. By using visual elements like charts, graphs, and maps, data
visualization tools provide an accessible way to see and understand trends,
outliers, and patterns in data.
This book is intended for the readers who are new to data visualization
tools. This book assumes that the readers have basic knowledge on data
sources and the challenges in handling big data. This book provides
information on need of data visua- lization and various tools in the market.
In that, it covers two popular tools Tableau and Google Data Studio.
Tableau is one of the most popular free tools for visualizing data
interactively. The graphs it creates are optimized to be viewed and to work
well in cellphones, tablets and computers. Its website includes video
tutorials and live sessions with Tableau experts. Even though Google Data
Studio interface is not most attractive, but it is a very powerful tool in
handling colossal amounts of data. It allows us to work collaboratively
through Google Drive and visualize the data in Google Maps.
This book provides the step by step procedure to create different
charts in 2 popular tools Tableau and Google Data Studio which will enable
the readers to work with tools easily and effectively.
 CONTENTS

Chapter I
1. Introduction to Data Visualization
2. Benefits of Data Visualization Tools
3. Data Visualization Tools
1. Google Data Studio

2. Qlikview

3. Tableau

4. Power BI

4. Features

1. Common features of Data Visualization Tool

2. Salient features of popular data

visualization tools

5. Data Access from Data Sources

Chapter II
6. Data Transformation

1. Extraction, Transformation and Load (ETL)

2. Messy data

3. Data formats and schemas

4. Data blending or fusion

5. Methods for data cleansing

6. Data profiling

7. Open source data-cleansing tools

7. Bar Chart

1. Types of bar chart

2.2.1 Bar chart example

2.2.4 Bar chartAdvantages

 5. Steps to create a Bar chart in Google Data Studio

6. Advanced options for Bar chart in Google Data Studio

3. Pie chart

1. Bar Chart Vs Pie Chart

2. Steps to create a Pie chart in Google Data Studio

4. Data Tables

5. Scatter chart

1. Steps to create a Scatter /Bubble chart in Google Data

Studio

Chapter III
6. Time Series Chart

1. Introduction

2. Working with Tableau – An Introduction

3. Procedure to Create Time Series Chart in Tableau

7. Scorecards

1. Introduction

2. Scorecard Vs Dashboard

8. Bullet Chart

1. Introduction

2. Components of Bullet Chart

3. Types of Bullet chart

4. Advantages and Disadvantage of Bullet Chart

5. Procedure to create bullet chart in Tableau

9. Area chart

1. Introduction

2. Line chart Vs Area Chart

3. Procedure to create an area chart in Tableau

Chapter IV
4.1 Heat Map
 1. Introduction

2. Uses of Heat Map

3. Procedure to Create Heat Map in Tableau

2. Geo Map

1. Introduction -Need of map visualization

2. Uses of Geo map

3. Types of maps

4. Procedure to create Geo map / Symbol map in

Tableau

3. Symbol Map

1. Introduction

2. Procedure to create Symbol Map

4. Filled Map

5. Editing Location in Map

1. Add more fields to view

Chapter V
6. Dashboard

1. Introduction

2. Dashboard – Definition

3. Key Metrics for Dashboard

4. Benefits of Dashboard

5. Types of Dashboards

6. Customized Dashboard

7. Creating a Dashboard

1. Creating a Dashboard using Google Data Studio

2. Creating a dashboard in Tableau

8. Formatting a dashboard

1. Dashboard Size

2. Steps to set overall dashboard size

2 Introduction to Data Visualization
Tools

3. Group items using layout

containers

4. Tile or float dashboard items

4. Actions in Dashboard

5. Sharing reports

1. Share with specific users and

groups

2. Sharing the link of report

3. Embedding report

4. Download the report

 CHAPTER
I
DATA VISUALIZATION TOOLS

1. INTR O D U C T I O N TO DATA VISUAL IZ AT I O N

Businesses and organizations have become more and more focused on
data that can be obtained from their customers, business processes and
services. Nowa- days, every business demands the activities from
analyzing their target audience to the progress of each sale. This has led
to the evolution of data visualization tools which present the business data
to the management effectively and enable them in good decision-making.
Data visualization is broadly defined as a method of encoding
quantitative, rela- tional, or spatial information into images.Data
Visualization is the graphical representa- tion of information and data
through the visual elements like charts, graphs,maps and dashboards. Data
visualization deals with how to present data, to the right people, at the right
time, to enable them to gain insights most effectively. There is more number
of commercial and non-commercial data visualization tools available in the
market. Some of the popular data visualization tools in use are Tableau,
Qlikview, Sisense, Google Data Studio, Zoho Analytics, Fusioncharts,
Highcharts, Datawrapper, Plotty, Microsoft PowerBI and IBM Watson
Analytics.

2. BENEFITS OF DATA VISUAL IZ AT I O N TO O L S

Data visualization tools offer new approaches to dramatically improve
the ability to grasp information hiding in the large volume of business data.
The primary advan- tages of data-visualization to decision makers and their
organizations are as follows:

Enhanced Assimilation of Business Information

Human eyes are able to absorb and grasp information more easily
through visuals and images than texts and numerical figures. Still, most
business intelligence reports that are compiled for senior management are
typically populated with static tables and charts that fail to make
information vivid for those who view it.
In contrast, data visualization enables users to receive vast amounts
of infor- mation regarding operational and business conditions. Data
visualization allows deci- sion makers to see connections between multi-
dimensional data sets and provides new ways to interpret data through the
use of heat maps, fever charts, and other rich graphi- cal representations.
4 Introduction to Data Visualization Tools

Quick Access to Relevant Business Insights

Adopting visual data discovery, business organizations improve their
ability to find the information they need when they need it and do so more
productively than other companies. According to a study conducted
recently, business managers in organizations that use visual data discovery
tools are 28 percent more likely to find timely information than those who
rely solely on managed reporting and dashboards. Moreover, 48 percent of
business intelligence users at companies that use visual data discovery are
able to find the information they need without the help of IT staff all or
most of the time.

Determine patterns in business operations

Data visualization enables users to see interesting and previously
unknown patterns – like, for example, being able to picture the relationship
between business and operations – and then related performance
measures. In fact, with data visua- lization, it is easier to see how day-to-
day job impacts the overall business perfor- mance, and find if any
operational changes caused an increase/decrease in business
performance.
Today, the amount of customer and market information that
organizations are able to gather is overwhelming. However, to ensure
organizations actually derive key insights from all this data, things need to
be simplified. Data visualization tools allow decision makers to quickly
visually identify any changes in customer behavior or market conditions
and make the necessary adjustments. The identified business pattern helps
the decision makers to easily identify the reason for growth or dip in the
organization’s performance and address it.

Rapid Identification of Latest Trends

In this age, the volume of data that companies are able to gather about
customers and market conditions can provide business leaders with insights
into new revenue and business opportunities, presuming they can spot the
opportunities in the mountain of data. Using data visualization, decision
makers are able to grasp shifts in customer behaviors and market
conditions across multiple data sets much more quickly.

Accurate Customer Sentiment Analysis

Using data visualization, companies can attain a deeper dive into
customer sen- timent and other data, which reveals emerging opportunities
for them to launch new services to their customers. These useful insights
enable the enterprises to act on new business opportunities for staying
ahead of their rivals.

Direct Interaction with Data

Data Visualization also helps the companies to manipulate and
interact with their data in a direct manner. One of the greatest strengths
of data visualization is
 CHAPTER I DATA VISUALIZATION TOOLS

how it brings actionable insights to the surface. Unlike one-dimensional

tables and charts that can only be viewed, data visualization tools enable
users to interact with data.

Geo-Spatial Visualization
Another scope of data visualization that has emerged in the business
world lately is the geo-spatial visualization. The popularity of geo-spatial
visualization has occurred due to a lot of websites providing web-services,
attracting visitors’ interest. This type of business needs to take advantage
of location specific information, which is already present in the system in
the form of customer’s zip code, providing better daily analysis experience.
This type of visualization adds a new dimension to the figures and helps in
better understanding of the matter.

Predictive Sales Analysis

With the help of real-time data-visualization, sales executives can
carry out advanced predictive analytics for their sales figures, viewing up-
to-date sales figures and see why certain products are underperforming and
the reasons that sales are lag- ging. For example, discounts offered by
competitors may be one of those reasons.

Drill-Down Sales Analysis

Using heat map data-visualization, business executives can illustrate
which product groups are performing well or underperforming, and drill
down into the data to determine the factors that are shaping sales. For
example, the data might reveal that pet-care products are
underperforming, but that higher-income customers represent the
majority of sales. These insights could be used to target promotions to
this customer segment to increase conversion rates and revenue growth
for this category.

Easy Comprehension of Data

Utilizing data-visualization, companies may approach huge data and
makes it easily comprehensible, be it the field of entertainment, current
affairs, financial issues or political affairs. It also builds in them a deep
insight, prompting them to take a good decision and an immediate business
action if needed.

Customized Data-Visualization
A yet another vital advantage of Data-visualization is that it not only
provides graphical representation of data but also allows changing the
form, omitting what is not required, and filter more to get further details.
This is a great eye catcher and attracts business executive’s attention
better and provides better communication. Additionally, it provides a
great advantage over traditional methods of presenting data.
6 Introduction to Data Visualization Tools

3. DATA VISUAL IZ AT I O N TO O L S
There is more number of commercial and non-commercial data
visualization tools available in the market. Some of the popular data
visualization tools in use are Tableau, Qlikview, Sisense, Looker, Google Data
Studio, Zoho Analytics, Fusioncharts, Highcharts, Datawrapper, Klipfolio,
Kibana, Chartio, Plotly, Infogram, Visme, Gecko- board, AnyChart, D3.js,
Microsoft PowerBI, IBM Watson Analytics and SAP Analytics Cloud.
The features, advantages and disadvantages few important tools in
the market are elaborated below.

1. Google Data Studio

The data visualization tool, Google Data Studio which can be accessed
freely using the Google Account. Google Data Studio is a data visualization
tool used to create effective data reports from data sources like Google
Analytics, Google Sheets, Google Ads, Google Search Console, YouTube, and
MySQL. Google Data Studio has templa- tes to set up reports and dash
boards quickly and easily.
The youngest tool and a part of Google’s analytics solutions - Google
Data Stu- dio. Being relatively new to the field, it strives to take its position
among many compe- titors via ease of usage, simple yet beautiful design,
innovative problem-solving and straightforward, habitual ways to share
dashboards (just as sharing documents). It is a fully web-based solution,
and there is no desktop version.
Google aspires to hit the right spot on the market with not just going
for a single BI tool, but also promoting all their other tools for working with
data by conveniently combi- ning them into the Google Analytics Solutions
data toolkit, a software suite for analyzing data and facilitating data-driven
solutions.
Google Data Studio allows for the transformation of raw data to
present it in interactive visualizations that will be compiled into dashboards.
In addition, the tool is perfectly accommodated for use with Google specific
data sources. It provides easy access to the data through the convenient
facility of data connectors.
Finally, one of the best parts concerns the collaboration techniques
that are used in Google Data Studio, bringing the team of developers to
work together on a single problem. Data Studio, allows others to view and
edit the dashboard in the same way as in Google Docs.

Unique Features
 Connectors to Google Data Sources
 Transformation tools for working with raw data
 CHAPTER I DATA VISUALIZATION TOOLS

 Decent library of built-in visual types

 Great teamwork capabilities
Sharing of reports is straightforward and functions analogously to
Google Drive. The control of access levels also works similarly,provides
facility to send invitations to access a report or a folder of reports via either
email, or a shareable link, and choose to either grant permission to view
only or allow editing.
Google Data Studio’s overall capabilities are still limited. Compared to
other tools, it is in short of creating interactivity of reports, customizing
visuals and calculating functions.

Advantages
 Developed as part of the Google Analytics suite, fully integrated with
other rele- vant Google products
 Simple in all major aspects, easy to use
 Great collaboration capabilities

Disadvantages
 Not flexible as its competitors
 Less ability to add custom visuals, only to modify the existing ones to
some extent
 Interactivity is not supported
 No functionality for mixing and blending data
 The data must be ready for visualization, only minor changes can be
done to it

1.3.2 Tableau
It is a popular and market-leading data visualization tool used to
visualize and analyze the data in an easily digestible format. It is an
extremely powerful tool that focuses on business intelligence and analysis,
utilized by thousands of companies worldwide. It allows working with live
data-sets and spends more time on data analysis. It has a very large
customer base across industries due to its simplicity and ability to produces
interactive visualization. It is particularly well suited to handling the huge
and very fast changing data-sets which are used in big data operations,
including artificial intelligence and machine learning applications.
Tableau has different licensing plans similar to other BI solutions.
Tableau offers three distinct products with drastically different prices.The
three products are the Tableau desktop, Tableau online, and Tableau server
that come at different price points.
It supports integration with large number of advanced variety of data
sources with many systematic types, such as data systems organized in
file formats (CSV, JSON,
8 Introduction to Data Visualization Tools

XML, MS Excel, etc.), relational and non-relational data systems (PostgreSQL,

MySQL, SQL Server, MongoDB, etc.), cloud systems (AWS, Oracle Cloud,
Google BigQuery, Microsoft Azure).
The core distinction from competitors is that Tableau has a special
feature of Data Blending. Another unique feature is the ability for
collaboration in real time that makes it a valuable investment for
commercial and non-commercial organizations alike. There are several
ways to share the reports in Tableau, by publishing them to a Tableau
server, via email Tableau Reader capability, by publishing Tableau workbook
openly and giving access to anyone who has a link. This magnitude of
options enables great flexibility and removes many restrictions.
Tableau offers a broad variety of visualization capabilities with distinct
features, enabling smart ways of data discovery and deep insight. The rich
library of visualizations types includes word clouds and bubble charts that
provide high levels of comprehension unique to Tableau. Tree diagram and
Treemap provide contextual information to the visuals. The latter is usually
utilized for the depiction of parts categorical data, focusing attention on the
most relevant pieces of the information.
Tableau dashboards are amazingly flexible. Its central features allow
the remar- kable ability to layout the dashboard in the desired way with any
overlaps, which comes really handy in the screen space ergonomics.
Tableau is easy to apprehend as a working tool, its learning curve is
pretty gentle, as it strives to provide all of its powers to any kind of users,
even those who haven’t been previously exposed to technical details of
visualization workflows. This objective is accomplished by using intuitive
interface, everything is always no more than two clicks away, robust filters
and drill-downs are easy to find and use, operations are well documented
and labeled.

Unique Features
 Complimentary sharing ability (with certain limitations)
 Support for connection to 30+ data source types
 Mixing data sources
 Support for cubes

Advantages
 Intuitive and attractive user interface
 Seamless integration with big data platforms, from Hadoop to Google
BigQuery
 Provides an extensive roaster of native data connections allowing
easy integra- tion with data from many resources
 CHAPTER I DATA VISUALIZATION TOOLS

 Responsiveness- supported by mobile platforms

 Powerful community collaboration
 Constant development – new updates are regularly released and are
easy to install

Disadvantages
 Initial data preparation is required (structured data)
 Although great for analytical purposes, Tableau and other BI tools
cannot replace financial reporting applications
 No concept of versioning with Tableau server

3. Qlikview
It is another data visualization tool which is a major player in the
market and Tableau’s biggest competitor. The key advantage of the tool is
highly customizable and wide range of features. In addition to its data
visualization capabilities, Qlikview offers powerful business intelligence
analytics and enterprise reporting capabilities and clean and clutter-free
user interface.QlikView is rated as one of the most expensive platforms in
the BI field.
QlikView is a solution that focuses on the user as the receiver of data.
It allows users to explore and discover your data in a workflow similar to the
way developers work when processing data. To sustain flexibility in its
approach to data exploration and visualization, this software strives to
maintain the association between data. This faci- litates the discovery of
your data by the end-user seeking a certain piece of data with awareness of
retrieval of any relevant items, in spite of any circumstances, even if the
origins of the items applicable to the search are incredibly disjoint.
QlikView is incredibly flexible. It allows setting and tweaking every little
aspect of each object and customizing the look and feel of any
visualizations and dashboards. With such great deal of flexibility, there also
comes an incorporated ETL (Extract, Tran- sform, Load) Engine that enables
you to conduct the ordinary data cleansing opera- tions. However, it may
turn out to be costly.

Unique Features
 Uniqueness and flexibility
 Rich set of features for creating advanced dashboards
 Manipulate data associations automatically
 Allows faster queries and quicker data exploration by keeping data in-
memory
1 Introduction to Data Visualization
0 Tools

Advantages
 Attractive user interface
 Easy to set up filtering for any kind of visuals
 Fast rendering of both graphs and tables
 Ability to mail reports in the convenient form of PDF

Disadvantages
 Unintentional combining of some data aspects while filtering
 No ability to union bookmark results together
 Complications in using it as an enterprise tool

1.3.4 Power BI
Power BI is the software solution, developed and supported by
Microsoft, for business intelligence and analytics needs. At the core of
Power BI is an online service with various options for interaction, also
featuring several outlets for connection to data provided by thirdparty
software and services.
Power BI provides a simple web-based interface with lotof useful
features varying from customizable visualization to certainly limited
controls of data sources. The desktop application expands the available
functionality to an even larger extent with the addition of tools for data
cleansing and normalization.Another way to work and make data-driven
decisions on the go is through the mobile app, which is availa- ble for
multiple platforms. It is also amazingly simple to share insights by
publishing your work to Power BI service and forming lively dashboards
from a combination of reports which makes the data communication
centralized and easy to follow up for all the participants.Power BI is concise
and minimalistic, yet powerful and robust. Howe- ver, like any other
software, it also has its ups and downs which must be carefully considered.
First of all, as it is a Microsoft product, it follows a philosophy,
principles, and architecture similar to other major Microsoft products. It
also exposes a familiar inter- face for the Windows users.Power BI was
created and designed with the aim to build upon the functionalities of MS
Excel, upgrade it to the next level, extend its operability even further to
unlock new use cases, cover more platforms, and reach out to the cloud.
As a Microsoft product, Power BI has connections to some other
software from the Microsoft’s toolbelt but goes much farther than that by
utilizing a whole suite of novel business analytics tools. Thus, Power BI is
not just related to other products; it is tightly integrated with the main
Microsoft tools including MS Excel, Azure Cloud Service, and SQL Server.
 CHAPTER I DATA VISUALIZATION TOOLS 1
1

Unique Features
 Power BI has a free basic version, giving users a chance to explore it
first
 It supports plenty of ways to incorporate or import your data
(streaming data, cloud services, excel spreadsheets, and third-party
connections)
 It has interactive dashboards with real-time feed of data
 Simple API for integrating Power BI with your applications
 Different ways to share reports and dashboards
 Multiplatform support (Web, Desktop, Mobile)

Advantages
 More affordable than other tools and offers a free version
 Integration with other Microsoft products, Azure, Excel, SQL Server
 The built-in library of visuals is impressive and robust
 Ability to connect almost any kind of data source

Disadvantages
 Unnecessary complexity
 Performance issues when streaming and importing big data sets
 Lack of data preparation and cleaning tools

4. FEATURES
1. Common features of Data Visualization Tool
Data Visualization tool helps enterprises, organizations and companies
to display data in the structured and ordered format, which is not only easy
to interpret but mea- ningful and receptive tomaking decisions. It identifies
patterns, limits noise and insignifi- cant values from the data to produce
actionable insights.So, in order to make most out of the Data Visualization,
companies need to select the right tool with variety of features and
capabilities. Some of the features that a data visualization tool should have
are discussed below. The following are a variety of features and capabilities
that experts recommend organizations consider when adopting
visualization tools for big data:

Clear and Customizable Dashboard

The dashboard could easily be called as the important feature of a
data visuali- zation tool. Just like one look at the car’s dashboard which
gives all the vital information that is in need such as speed, indicator, light,
seat belt, fuel etc. Similarly, a visualization
12 Introduction to Data Visualization Tools

dashboard should be able to present all the key information in a glance.

A sample dashboard prepared using Microsoft Power BI visualization tool is
shown in figure 1.1.

Fig. 1.1 Sample Dashboard prepared using Microsoft Power BI

visualization tool
A good data visualization dashboard should be a few things
simultaneously. For starters, it should look great. It needs to be clear, with
pops of color amid adequate whitespace. Too white is boring and too much
color is overwhelming. The dashboard should strike a balance.
The dashboard should be able to accurately summarize all the data
that matters. The top Key Process Indicators (KPI) you are trying to track,
the vital trends you are monitoring or any other dataset that is pivotal to
your business should be clearly visuali- zed on the dashboard in a way that
you have the general overview within a few seconds of launching the
dashboard. Facts presented on the dashboard should be clear and
decipherable in a glance.
Another very important quality a dashboard must possess is
customizability. At any given time, your company may be tracking dozens
of different datasets. You should have the power to customize which
datasets appear prominently on the dashboard. Different teams have
different priorities and hence, the data visualization tool must allow
complete customizability.

Embeddability
The ability to seamlessly integrate the visual reports into any other
applications in use is important to really utilize the power of data
visualization. For the teams to work efficiently, collaborate better and share
across different platforms, the data visualization software must have the
feature to allow using the various media like graphs and charts into
different mobile or web applications. The quality and richness of the visual
reports
 CHAPTER I DATA VISUALIZATION TOOLS

13

should not diminish when transporting it onto a different application. The

reports should still remain interactive and allow further investigation of the
data.
Not all departments need to analyze all the high-level data your tool
collects. Most of them would only want one part of that data to seamlessly
integrate with their specific applications. They need immediate actionable
insights that can help them incre- ase the efficiency of their tasks and
campaigns. A good data visualization tool must allow for easy
embeddability.

Performance
If visualization tools for big data distract workers from the flow of their
work, they’re less likely to be used. A few seconds delay may not be
significant for some use cases but may discourage users tasked with
evaluating hundreds of decisions throu- ghout the day. Features that help
improve performance include prompts, data optimiza- tion settings and
dynamic loading options.
Another performance-related feature to consider is the tool’s ability to
run com- putations on GPUs. As data sets have grown, rendering large
amounts of data with traditional architectures has become harder. GPUs
used with direct memory access can help crunch large volumes of data
faster and more efficiently. This makes it easier to build high-definition
visualizations on the server side that simply get served by the application
via a web application.

Interactive Reporting
The visual reports generated by a data visualization tool must be
extremely inte- ractive, allowing easy investigation into trends and insights.
Interactive data visualization helps identify trends and tell a story through
data. This includes capabilities for filtering, slicing and dicing, and drilling
up and down at speeds that make it possible for users to investigate huge
volumes of data and get answers to their questions immediately.
Data analysts and decision makers need to be able to collate data
from various sources and combine datasets to produce insightful reports.
The tool should allow for the reports to be viewed in various different
formats and different parts can be highlighted at different times. Industry
specific KPIs need to be customized to provide tailored insights. To enable
all of this, the business intelligence and data visualization tool needs to be
highly interactive.

Data Collection and Sharing

Importing raw data to the visualization tool and then exporting the
visual reports in various different forms is something that needs to be
managed by the company in the way it likes. Some datasets can be fed into
the tool in their rawest form while others will need to be aggregated first
because they are too large. Sometimes, data can be taken from just one
14 Introduction to Data Visualization Tools

Also the tool must provide the facility to share the reports to team
members and other stakeholders. The reports must be exportable to other
applications.

Geo-tagging and Location Intelligence

The globalization of business demands location intelligence in the data
visuali- zation tool. Where is the data coming from? Which states or regions
are more actively using the services and which areas need more work? The
ability to layer sets of data chronologically and spatially is important for
businesses that need to track location- based KPIs.

Collaboration
Real-time collaboration capabilities in visualization tools for big data
allow employees to have more meaningful conversations about their
discoveries. This includes the ability for employees to collaborate in real
time on current data, rather than requiring them to send static files and
screenshots to one another.

Streaming data support

Enterprises are now faced with wrangling massive volumes of
complex, stre- aming data from a variety of different sources. Many
visualization tools use legacy back ends based on structured batch data
analysis. This makes it difficult to analyze extreme data in real time.
Support for streaming data can allow more visualization use cases
involving data from social media, internet of things devices and mobile
applications.

Artificial Intelligence Integration

Visualization tools for big data are starting to experiment with machine
learning, deep learning and natural language processing to make it easier to
analyze, explore, predict and prescribe actions.

2. Salient features of popular data visualization tools

Tableau - Tableau has for a long time now, been hailed as one of the best
data visua- lization tools out there. Their clientele includes giants like
LinkedIn, Deloitte, Lufthansa and PepsiCo. Some of its best features are,
 Customizable dashboards that is embeddable with applications like
Salesforce, SharePoint and Jive etc.
 Real-time interactive dashboards for filter on demand and click to dig
deeper
 Plenty of data connections with live and in-memory data
 Secure collaboration
 Mobile optimized
 CHAPTER I DATA VISUALIZATION TOOLS

15

Qlikview- Qlikview is probably the strongest competitor to Tableau. It was in

fact cho- sen as the Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader 2019 and boasts
clients like Conde Nast, Subaru and Global retail Bank. Some of its best
features include,
 Embedded Analytics
 Advanced Analytics Integration with third party engines like Python
 Customizable Dashboard
 Predictive Analysis
 Shared file management
Sisense - Sisense is more than a traditional analytics tool. It is scalable and
can handle all sorts of data. With high profile clients including NASA,
NASDAQ, Samsung and Comcast, Sisense is definitely one of the best. Top
futures include,
 Customizable dashboard with sharing, drag and drop and built-in chart
widgets
 In-memory columnar database can crunch terabytes of data on a
single server
 Extremely fast implementation
 Advanced machine learning and AI
 Instant insights that update in real-time
 Interactive and automatic scheduled reporting
Domo - Domo is not just a data visualization tool but a complete business
management platform that handles your analytics and reporting from just
one platform, with clients ranging from eBay to National Geographic and
Sage. Its features include,
 Hundreds of data connectors including Facebook, Salesforce etc.
 Workbench functionality imports on-premise data into Domo easily
 Easily cleans, combines and transforms data in multiple ways
 Easy data sharing with custom tools
 Mobile optimized with automatic alerts
 Automatic schedule reporting and customizable dashboard
Microsoft Power BI -Coming from Microsoft gives Power BI a familiarity that
makes it easy for new entrants to adopt and explore. To add to this ease of
adoption, Power BI offers a free basic version and is open-source. With
clients like Adobe, HP and Toshiba, it offers features like,
 Interactive dashboard with real-time data feed and easy sharing
 Customized reports that can be created from scratch
 Easy data capture and sharing with Datasets
 Explore data by asking questions in natural language
 Cloud based and easy to implement
16 Introduction to Data Visualization Tools

Klipfolio - With over 500 data sources it can connect to including Google
Analytics, Twitter and Moz, Klipfolio is a great choice indeed. Top features
include,
 Widespread data sourcing
 Financial forecasting
 Customizable dashboard with built in templates
 Real-time accuracy
Plotly -One of the most colorful, yet elegant BI solutions out there, Plotly
helps create interactive graphs for easy comprehension. Some of its top
features are,
 2D and 3D charts with designer input and customizability
 Integration with analytics oriented languages like Python, R and
Matlab
 User friendly with inbuilt APIs
Chartio - Chartio is a BI and data visualization tool for all businesses big
and small. Some features include,
 Real-time analytics with live changes
 Comparative analytics
 Easy set-up
 Multiple chart formats
Geckoboard - With over 80 pre-built services for real-time analysis,
Geckoboard make data visualization easy for anyone. Some of its best
features are,
 Custom dashboards with pre-built widgets
 Rich integrations with APIs for Facebook, twitter, Salesforceetc
 Pull and push data integrations
 Customizable style sheets, schema and widgets
Datawrapper - Datawrapper’s simple, clear and easy to use interface has
quickly made it a top choice among non-technical clients like media
organizations such as Fortune, Mother Jones and The Times. Some of its
best features are,
 Easy to use with no coding or design skills required
 Fast and interactive charts
 Styled to your branding
To summarize, choosing the right data visualization tool is a big
decision not only because they are fairly expensive, but also because they
play a huge role in shaping the business strategy. A tool that can present
the most clear, interactive and accurate visual reports can help business
people to take better decisions, make better plans and track
 CHAPTER I DATA VISUALIZATION TOOLS

17

the KPI’s better. So depending on what features matter most to the

business, choose a tool that will give just the representations that are in
need.

1.5 DATA A C C E SS FRO M DATA S O U R C E S

Data visualization tools provide excellent facility to connect to variety
of data sources and fetch data to prepare reports. For example, Google
Data Studio is a data visualization tool used to create effective data reports
from data sources like Google Analytics, Google Sheets, Google Ads, Google
Search Console, YouTube, and MySQL. A sample screenshot of Data Studio
is given in fig 1.2 to understand the data sources supported by it.

Fig. 1.2 Screenshot of Google Data Studio Data Sources

The tool, Tableau can connect to all the popular data sources which are
widely used. Tableau’s native connectors shown in figure 1.3can connect to
the following types of data sources.
 File Systems such as CSV, Excel, etc.
 Relational Systems such as Oracle, Sql Server, DB2, etc.
 Cloud Systems such as Windows Azure, Google BigQuery, etc.
 Other Sources using ODBC
Connect Live –In Tool Tableau, the Connect Live feature is used for real-time
data analysis. In this case, Tableau connects to real-time data source and
keeps reading the data. Thus, the result of the analysis is up to the second,
and the latest changes are reflected in the result. However, on the
downside, it burdens the source system as it has to keep sending the data
to Tableau.
1 Introduction to Data Visualization
8 Tools

Fig. 1.3 Sample screenshot of Tableau’s native connect

In-Memory - Tableau can also process data in-memory by caching them in
memory and not being connected to the source anymore while analyzing
the data. Of course, there will be a limit to the amount of data cached
depending on the availability of memory.
Combine Data Sources - Tableau can connect to different data sources at the
same time. For example, in a single workbook, connecting to a flat file and a
relational source by defining multiple connections is possible. This is used in
data blending, which is a very unique feature in Tableau.

R E V IE W Q U E S T I O N S
1. Write the benefits of Data Visualization tools.
2. What is Geo-Spatial Visualization?
 CHAPTER I DATA VISUALIZATION TOOLS

19

3. Differentiate predictive sales analysis and drill-down sales analysis.

4. List out popular data visualization tools and write the unique features
of any one tool.
5. Pen down the advantages and disadvantages of Google Data Studio.
6. What is Tableau?
7. Describe the unique features of Tableau, Qlik View and Power BI.
8. Elaborate the Geo-tagging and Location Intelligence.
9. Differentiate Plotly and chartio.
10. Explain Klipfolio.
11. Explain the accessign of Google Data Studion using free google account.
12. Elucidate the salient features of Tableau tool.
13. Describe the tool Qlik view.
14. Brief the Power BI online service.
15. Explain the clear and customizabe dashboard.
16. Elaborate the steps to fetch data and prepare reports using data
visualization tools.
17. Write the steps to create a report in Google Data Studio
18. Describe the data access from data sources with an example.
19. Compare the unique features of Google Data Studio, Tableau and qlik
view.
20. Create a sample report for world population data using Google Data
Studio.
 CHAPTER
II

2.1 DATA T R AN S FO R M AT I O N
Data comes in many forms such as text, numerical, images and videos.
For exam- ple, a customer details form where few fields are not filled and
left empty. Such data are known as missing data. In most of the cases, data
may be missing data, unstructured data, or data that lacks regular
structure. In data visualization, before processing the data, there is a need
of cleaning data to make it fit to process further.
Data cleansing has a long history in databases and is a key step
known as extract, transform, load (ETL), commonly used in data warehouses
shown in figure 2.1, where data is extracted from one or more sources;
transformed into its proper for- mat and structure, including cleansing of
the data; and finally loaded into a final target location, such as a single
database or file which can be used for business analytics &data
visualization.

Fig. 2.1 ETL Process

2.1.1 Extraction,Transformation and Load (ETL)

Extraction
The first step of the ETL process is extraction. In this step, data from
various source systems is extracted which can be in various formats like
relational databases, No SQL, XML and flat files into the staging area. It is
important to extract the data from various source systems and store it into
the staging area first and not directly into the data warehouse because the
extracted data is in various formats and can be corrupted
22 Introduction to Data Visualization Tools

also. Hence loading it directly into the data warehouse may damage it and
rollback will be much more difficult. Therefore, this is one of the most
important steps of ETL process.

Transformation
The second step of the ETL process is transformation. In this step, a
set of rules or functions are applied on the extracted data to convert it into
a single standard format. It may involve following processes/tasks:
 Filtering – loading only certain attributes into the data warehouse.
 Cleaning – filling up the NULL values with some default values,
mapping U.S.A, United States and America into USA, etc.
 Joining – joining multiple attributes into one.
 Splitting – splitting a single attribute into multiple attributes.
 Sorting – sorting tuples on the basis of some attribute (generally key-
attribute).

Loading
The third and final step of the ETL process is loading. In this step, the
transfor- med data is finally loaded into the data warehouse. Sometimes the
data is updated by loading into the data warehouse very frequently and
sometimes it is done after longer but regular intervals. The rate and period
of loading solely depends on the requirements and varies from system to
system.

2.1.2 Messy data

Data sets large and small are rarely ready to use. As figure 2.1 shows,
simple comma- separated value (CSV) data set has a variety of issues,
including invalid fields, missing and additional values, and other issues. It
cannot be used directly for further processing.

Figure 2.1 Simple messy data set example

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This example is a simple one, but anyone who has worked with a
public data set will understand these issues and the need to preprocess
data to make it useful. Data sets that have such obvious errors make the
results of the processed data somewhat questionable. The observations
with errors result in incomplete data or invalid observa- tions that can lead
to incorrect results. Cleansing data is therefore a key step in the data
processing pipeline.
Data may also come from multiple sources. Although each source may
be valid in isolation, bringing the data together may require processing for
consistency and uni- formity. For example, one data set may have a
different unit of measure for a given field than another, requiring that they
be normalized.One key factor for data validity, then, is the format in which
the data is represented.

2.1.3 Data formats and schemas

Data sets can be in many forms, but the majority is stored as delimited
text files. As shown in fig 2.1, these data sets delimit their fields by using a
character, commonly a comma, but in other cases through white space
(space, tab, etc.). These raw data sets are particularly prone to error
because they lack any information that indicates their structure and so
require data scientists to interpret the data set manually.
So-called “self-describing formats” can greatly improve our ability to
maintain data correctly. These formats include XML and JSON. These data
formats allow the data to be embedded within metadata to make it fully self-
describing within a single file. They also permit complex data formats that
are more difficult to describe with simple flat text files (such as variant
arrays of data or relationships within the data).Figure 2.2 shows the
representation of temperature data by using the JSON format. Here the data
is labeled, and the labels are predefined such that the ingest tool
understands what to expect.

Figure 2.2 JSON format to self-describe a data set

24 Introduction to Data Visualization Tools

2.1.4 Data blending or fusion

Data blending is the process by which a data set is constructed from two
or more independent data sets. Blending data may not be a one-time
process; instead, it can be performed on demand based on the machine
learning use case.For example, users in a marketing department might
blend data from a CRM system and a spreadsheet with product profitability
information. They could then quickly see which products not only make the
most money, but also attract the most customer purchasing interest.
Blending data has all the problems namely, the need to cleanse more
than one data source. Fusing multiple data sets has additional problems,
however, in the repre- sentation of the data in each source (such as one
data set that uses Celsius and ano- ther that uses Kelvin, as illustrated in
figure 2.3). The data may not be consistent across sources and may require
transforming and reordering data fields so that the fused data can be
properly used.

Figure 2.3 Blending and transforming two data sets

Some data blending tools may not preserve all the data detail when
combining datasets. For example, data visualization software may do
blending by simply aggregating data. In this case, users will get rapid views
and summary information from the combined data. However, more in-depth
data exploration may not be possible. Users may not be able to ask ad-hoc
questions, which in turn could limit creativity and innovation.

2.1.5 Methods for data cleansing

Data cleansing begins with data parsing, which means taking each
observation from its data file and extracting each independent element. The
parsing can be easily identified if the records are similar such as same
number of elements, similar types, etc.
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Schema, a higher-level representation of the data observations, we

can type- check the observation to ensure that it matches the schema and
the user’s expectation for later data analysis. For example, we can ensure
that a number is contained at a given field location instead of a string given
that you intend to perform numerical ope- rations on it. A schema informs
whether the proper number of fields is represented for each observation.
Some data-cleansing applications permit the construction of rules with
functions that permit more complex transformations of data. For example,
interrogating fields to create or modify other fields based on their contents.
The rules can also validate the consistency of an observation to remove
invalid data or to transform data for greater accuracy. For example,
modifying the U.S. ZIP code from five digits to the enhanced nine digits. We
can also identify duplicates, although there are applications for duplicate
observations in a data set so that duplicate elimination isn’t always required
or neces- sary. When a data set is syntactically correct, we can apply
methods to ensure that the data is semantically correct.

2.1.6 Data profiling

When the data is clean, the next step is to profile the data as a
secondary step in the cleansing process. Profiling is an analysis of the data
to ensure that the data is consistent. Through profiling, we can dig into the
data to see the distribution of the indi- vidual fields to look for outliers and
other data that doesn’t match the general data set. For example, Figure 2.4
illustrates this process.

Figure 2.4 Data set errors made visible through data profiling
In line 1, given that the real values represent physical measurements,
a zero value may indicate an issue with this observation. In line 3, you see
that the range of the measurement is obviously not in the same range as
other measurements of this field (and its type differs). Finally, in line 5,
notice that the class name is misspelled. In some cases, these issues can
be detected automatically through profiling. We could indicate that all
measurements should be greater than 0 to catch the first issue. Through
26 Introduction to Data Visualization Tools

statistical analysis, we could identify the second outlier measurement. The

final issue could be identified by capturing the unique class names and
through their frequencies understand that this particular class name is an
outlier (likely an occurrence of one). We can validate time-series data in the
context of flow to ensure that the data is processed in the correct order
given timestamps.

2.1.7 Open source data-cleansing tools

There are many open source data-cleansing tools in the market. One
interesting example is called Drake, which performs data cleansing for text-
based data by using a workflow approach that automatically handles
dependencies in the available data and the commands to cleanse them. It
supports multiple input and output files and has a similar operation as the
make utility in the context of managing dependencies.
The Data Cleaner tool is a framework and data-profiling engine that
exposes an API and allows user-defined extensions for data cleansing. Data
Cleaner supports multi- ple input and output formats, with the ability to
create rules for data quality over the data.

2. BAR C H A RT
Bar charts involve rectangular blocks of varying heights, and the
height of the block corresponds to the value of the quantity being
represented. The vertical axis shows the values – for example, the total
number of each type of object counted and the horizontal axis shows the
categories. In case of counting the different types of vehi- cles in a parking
lot, the individual blocks could represent cars, vans, motorcycles and jeeps,
and their heights could represent the count of each vehicle
In other words, a bar chart uses horizontal or vertical bars to show
comparisons among categories. The longer the bar, the greater the value it
represents. In the bar chart, an axis of the chart shows the specific
categories (dimensions) which is being compared and the other axis
represents a discrete value (metric).
The bars can represent pretty much anything that can fit into
categories, though, or even the values of the same quantity at different
points in time. The height of the bar could also represent a wide range of
things, including counts, total revenues, per- centages, frequencies or
values in any unit of measurement (e.g., heights, speeds or masses). Bar
graphs are incredibly versatile, so anybody dealing with data will
undoubtedly use them often.

1. Types of bar chart

Types of bar chart supported by various visualization tools are,
 Vertical bar chart / Column chart
 Stacked vertical bar chart / Stacked column chart
 CHAPTER II CONTENTS

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 100% Stacked vertical bar chart / 100% Stacked column chart

 Waterfall chart
 Horizontal bar chart
 Stacked horizontal bar chart
 100% Stacked horizontal bar chart
Bar charts, also known as column charts, use vertical or horizontal
bars to repre- sent data along both an x-axis and a y-axis visually. Each bar
represents one value. When the bars are stacked next to one another, the
viewer can compare the different bars, or values, at a glance.
For example, a bar chart might show how smartphone use has
changed over time. Along the vertical axis, or axis Y, the maker of the graph
would plot a quantitative or numerical scale such as smartphone users by
the millions. On the horizontal axis, or axis X, the graph maker might plot a
category, such as years from 2009 to 2019. In this way, viewers can easily
see how many millions of people started using smartphones during each of
those years and whether that number steadily increased or decreased over
time.

2.2.1 Bar chart example

The bar charts below show 2 different views of Google Analytics web
traffic data. The base dimension for both charts is Medium. The left hand
chart uses stacked bars to show several metrics (Sessions, Userand Exits) for
medium. The right hand chart uses a second dimension, Country ISO Code,
to breakdown each medium according to its country of origin. Instead of
stacked bars, this chart use grouped bars: each bar is a data series
corresponding to one of the countries. Two dimensional charts can only plot
a single metric (Sessions again in this example).

Figure 2.5 Bar chart example

28 Introduction to Data Visualization Tools

4. Bar chartAdvantages
 Its simplicity makes a bar graph a good choice to represent data
across to large groups of people.
 It is their ability to represent data that shows changes over time,
which helps people visualize trends.
 Along with more complicated types of graph, the simple bar graph can
present many different types of data clearly and concisely.
 That historical context can lead to a greater understanding of the
data and why it is important. For example, a bar graph could be useful
for people who want to show how McDonald’s preferences have
changed over time.
 The bar chart is the one that gets the key pieces of information across
in the most readable and digestible format, without sacrificing
accuracy.
 It is in widespread use everywhere from textbooks to newspapers,
most audien- ces understand how to read a bar graph and can grasp
the information the graph conveys.
 Other types of graphs, such as those with compressed scales, matrix
graphs or MTF charts, are difficult to read for someone who isn’t
already familiar with that type of data visualization.

5. Steps to create a Bar chart in Google Data Studio

 Type datastudio.google.com in the url address bar in the browser
and signin using your google account
 Data Studio overview page will be shown.
 Click the ‘+’ box with title Start a new report as shown below.

Figure 2.6 Data studio starting page

 CHAPTER II CONTENTS 2
9
 A new Untitled Report page will be opened. Click FileNew
report

Figure 2.7 A blank report page in Data studio

 From the right side pane select data source. (for eg. [Sample] World
Population Data 2..)
 Click “add a chart” in the toolbar. Data Studio makes it easy to
compare chart types with some handy illustrations as shown below.

Figure 2.8 Add a chart menu item in Data studio

 Choose anyone chart type under “Bar”. It may be column chart /
horizontal chart, etc., once it appears on the report page, the right-
hand pane will change with Data and Style options.
3 Introduction to Data Visualization
0 Tools

Figure 2.9 Stacked column bar chart for world population data
 By default, the dimension is “Year”, Data Studio will automatically
select a metric (eg. ‘population’, what’s displayed on the Y axis).
Metric and dimension can be changed. For instance, female%.
Internet users% etc.
 In the style tab, how many bars and how many country details can be
changed.
 To see the finished product, click “View” in the top corner. This
transitions you from Editor to Viewer mode. To edit the report Click
“Edit.”
 To finish up, we need to give the report a name. Double-click the title
(right now it’s “Untitled Report”) to change it as ‘World Population
Barchart’

Figure 2.10 Naming the report in data studio

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6. Advanced options for Bar chart in Google Data

Studio
There are many advanced option in the data visualization tool, Google
Data Stu- dio to effectively present the bar chart. Those options are,
 Drilling Down - gives viewers a way to reveal additional levels of detail
within a chart
 Breakdown dimension - displays the metric data broken down
according to the selected dimension.
 Date range dimension - used as the basis for limiting the date range of
the chart. For example, this is the dimension used if you set a date
range property for the chart, or if a viewer of the report uses a date
range control to limit the time frame.

3. Pie chart
Pie charts are extensively used in presentations and offices. Pie Charts
help show proportions and percentages between categories, by dividing a
circle into propor- tional segments. Each arc length represents a proportion
of each category, while the full circle represents the total sum of all the
data, equal to 100%.Pie Charts are ideal for giving the reader a quick idea
of the proportional distribution of the data. Comparing a given category
(one slice) within the total of a single pie chart, then it can often be more
effective. However the major disadvantages to pie charts are:
 They cannot show more than a few values, because as the number of
values shown increases, the size of each segment/slice becomes
smaller. This makes them unsuitable for large amounts of data.
 They take up more space than their alternatives, like stacked bar chart
for exam- ple. Mainly due to their size and for the usual need for a
legend.
 They are not great for making accurate comparisons between groups
of pie charts. This being that it is harder to distinguish the size of
items via area when it is for length.
An example of bar chart and pie chart is shown in fig 2.11 which
visualizes of the sales from a fictitious fruit stand.
3 Introduction to Data Visualization
2 Tools

Figure 2.11 Bar chart and Pie Chart

In the bar chart, it’s easy to see the relative sales values of each fruit.
In the pie chart, legends on the right to be referred. To know the sales of
apple, in the bar chart, we have to do some mental math summing all the
non-apple sales. But with the pie chart it’s immediately obvious, even
without looking at the value in the legend, that apples do in fact make up
more than half of sales.
If the goal for the visualization is to convey the sales amount of
each product, the bar chart is the better selection. But if the point of the
visualization isn’t to know the precise value of each of the products, but
instead to bring home the point that apples are more than half of your
business, then the pie chart is a more powerful visualization.

1. BAR C H A RT VS PIE C H A RT
Bar charts and pie charts are very common data visualization tools,
but it is important to use them correctly to ensure you convey clear and
concise information. Most data visualization tools make it very easy to plot
the data as either a bar chart or a pie chart. According to the goal of
visualization i.e. what to visualize, we have to select the chart. Because of
the pitfalls of pie charts, bar charts tend to be the better choice. However,
there are times when the pie chart is actually the better, more powerful
visua- lization. Additionally, there are many instances where it’s easy for the
human eye to tell the slice values approximately enough for the purpose of
the visualization. In that case the choice between the bar chart and the pie
chart is purely a matter of preference.
As a rule of thumb:
 Use either a bar chart or a pie chart when comparing parts of a whole,
the cate- gories are few (up to four), and it’s easy for the human eye
to estimate their value when presented as slices (as when the values
are close to 25%, 50% or 75%)
 Use a pie chart when there is a specific and clear point related to the
share of the total that we are trying to get across and the individual
values of each slice is not important
 Use a bar chart otherwise
 CHAPTER II CONTENTS 3
3

2. Steps to create a Pie chart in Google Data Studio

 Type datastudio.google.com in the url address bar in the browser
and sign-in using your google account
 Data Studio overview page will be shown.
 Click the ‘+’ box with title Start a new report as shown below.

Figure 2.12 Data studio starting page

 A new Untitled Report page will be opened. Click FileNew
report

Figure 2.12A A blank report page in Data studio

3 Introduction to Data Visualization
4 Tools
 From the right side pane select data source. (for eg. [Sample] World
Population Data 2..)
 Click “add a chart” in the toolbar. Data Studio makes it easy to
compare chart types with some handy illustrations as shown below.

Figure 2.13 Add a chart menu item in Data studio

 Choose anyone chart type under “Pie”. There are 2 types: Pie chart
and Donut chart. Select any one. Once it appears on the report page,
the right-hand pane will change with Data and Style options.

Figure 2.14 Pie chart for world population data

 CHAPTER II CONTENTS 3
5

Figure 2.15 Donut chart for world population data with country as
dimension and population as metric
 By default, the dimension is “Year”, Data Studio will automatically
select a metric (eg. ‘population’, what’s displayed on the Y axis).
Metric and dimension can be changed. For instance, female%.
Internet users % etc.
 In the style tab, how many bars and how many country details can be
changed.
 To see the finished product, click “View” in the top corner. This
transitions you from Editor to Viewer mode. To edit the report Click
“Edit.”
 To finish up, we need to give the report a name. Double-click the title
(right now it’s “Untitled Report”) to change it as ‘World Population pie
chart’

2.4 DATA TABLES

Data tables display the data in a grid of rows and columns. Each
column repre- sents a dimension or metric, while each row is one record of
the data. Tables automati- cally summarize the data. Each row in the table
displays the summary for each unique combination of the dimensions
included in the table definition. Each metric in the table is summarized
according to the aggregation type for that metric (sum, average, count,
etc.). For example, in Google Data Studio, table can have up to 10
dimensions and 20 metrics.
A data table which presents sales data for a fictional pet store is
shown in Table
2.1. The store sells items for dogs, cats, and birds, with several
products in each category.
3 Introduction to Data Visualization
6 Tools

Date Item Category Qty Sold

10/1/2016 Happy Cat Catnip Cat 1

10/1/2016 Healthy Dog Food Dog 3
10/1/2016 Pretty Bird Seed Bird 5
10/2/2016 Pretty Bird Seed Bird 3
10/2/2016 Happy Cat Catnip Cat 2
10/3/2016 Playful Puppy Toy Dog 6
10/5/2016 Pretty Bird Seed Bird 7

Table 2.2 shows just the category dimension and quantity metric for
table 2.1. It has aggregated the quantities sold per category. Since there are
only 3 categories in the data set, the table shows just 3 rows.

Category Qty Sold

Bird 28
Dog 27
Cat 12

Table 2.3 contains 6 rows, 1 for each item. The quantity sold metric is
now aggre- gated per item.

Category Item Qty Sold

Bird Pretty Bird Bird Seed 20

Dog Healthy Dog Dog Food 17
Dog Playful Puppy Toy 10
Bird Parrot Perch 8
Cat Happy Cat Catnip 4
Cat Hungry Kitty Cat Food 3
 CHAPTER II CONTENTS

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2.5 SCAT TER C H A RT

Scatter charts can be used to look for relationships between variables.
These charts show the data as points or circles on a graph using X (left to
right) and Y (top to bottom) axes. Scatter charts can include a trend line
that shows how the variables in the chart are related. They tend to be more
frequently used in scientific fields. Though infrequent,there are use cases
for scatter charts in the business world as well.
For example, to manage bus fleet, we have to understand the
relationship between miles driven and cost per mile. Thescatterplot may
look something like in figure 2.16.

Figure 2.16 Sample scatter chart

To focus primarily on those cases where cost per mile isabove average,
a slightly modified scatter chart designed as given in figure 2.17.

Figure 2.17 Scatter chart with conditions

38 Introduction to Data Visualization Tools

From the figure 2.17, cost per mile ishigher than average when less
than about 1,700 miles or more than about 3,300 miles observations can be
made.

1. Steps to create a Scatter /Bubble chart in Google

Data Studio
 Type datastudio.google.com in the url address bar in the browser
and sign-in using your google account
 Data Studio overview page will be shown.
 Click the ‘+’ box with title Start a new report as shown below.

Figure 2.18 Data studio starting page

 A new Untitled Report page will be opened. Click FileNew
report

Figure 2.19 A blank report page in Data studio

 CHAPTER II CONTENTS

39

 From the right side pane select data source. (for eg. [Sample] World
Population Data 2..)
 Click “add a chart” in the toolbar. Data Studio makes it easy to
compare chart types with some handy illustrations as shown below.

Figure 2.20 Add a chart menu item in Data studio

 Choose anyone chart type under “Scatter”. There are 2 types: Scatter
chart and Bubble chart. Select any one. Once it appears on the report
page, the right-hand pane will change with Data and Style options.

Figure 2.21 Scatter chart for world population data

4 Introduction to Data Visualization
0 Tools

Figure 2.22 Bubble chart for world population data with country as
dimension and population as metric
 By default, the dimension is “Year”, Data Studio will automatically
select a metric (eg. ‘population’, what’s displayed on the Y axis).
Metric and dimension can be changed. For instance, female%,
Internet users % etc.
 In the style tab, how many bars and how many country details can be
changed.
 To see the finished product, click “View” in the top corner. This
transitions you from Editor to Viewer mode. To edit the report Click
“Edit.”
 To finish up, we need to give the report a name. Double-click the title
(right now it’s “Untitled Report”) to change it as ‘World Population
Scatter Chart”.

R E V IE W Q U E S T I O N S
1. Explain Transformation process in ETL.
2. Elaborate messy data
3. What is self –describing format?
4. Describe data blending.
5. Brief the data parsing method in data cleaning
6. Elucidate data profiling with an example.
7. List out the advanced options for Barchart in Google Data Studio.
8. Write the advantages of barchart.
9. Explain Data tables with an example.
10. Elaborate Scatter chat with an eample.
 CHAPTER II CONTENTS

41

11. Describe the ETL process with a neat sketch.

12. Discuss the methods in data cleansing with necessary diagram.
13. List out the types of barchat and write the procedute to draw a bar chart
for Google Analytics Web Traffic Data.
14. How to create a bar chart in google data studio.
15. Differentiate Barchart and Pie chart.
16. Elaborate the steps to create a pie chart in Google Data Studio.
17. How to create a Scatter or bubble chart in Google Data Studio.
18. Write the steps to create a time series chart in Google Data Studio.
 CHAPTER
III

1. TIME SERIES C H A RT
1. Introduction
Time series forecasting is a critical requirement for many
organizations. The star- ting point of forecasting is a time series
visualization, which provides the flexibility to reflect on historical data and
analyze trends and seasonal components. It also helps to compare multiple
dimensions over time, spot trends and identify seasonal patterns in the
data. A few examples include stock market analysis, population trend
analysis using a census, or sales and profit trends over time.
Time series analysis is a statistical technique used to record and
analyze data points over a period of time, such as daily, monthly, yearly,
etc. A time series chart is the graphical representation of the time series
data across the interval period. A time series chart, also called as times
series graph or time series plot, is a data visualiza- tion tool. Each point on
the chart corresponds to both a time and a quantity that is being
measured. A sample time series chart shown in fig 3.1.

Fig. 3.1 Sample Time-Series Chart

Generally, the horizontal axis of the chart or graph is used to plot
increments of time and the vertical axis pinpoints values of the variable
that is being measured. When the values are connected in chronological
order by a straight line that creates a series of peaks and valleys, a time
series chart may also be referred to as a fever chart.
44 Introduction to Data Visualization Tools

3.1.2 Working with Tableau – An Introduction

Tableau, a popular data visualization tool can be used to create
various charts.
The opening screen of the Tableau Desktop version is shown in fig 3.2.

Fig 3.2 Snapshot of Tableau Opening Screen

The Tableau workspace is a collection of worksheets, menu bar,
toolbar, marks card, shelves and a lot of other elements as shown in fig 3.3.
Sheets can be workshe- ets, dashboards, or stories. The image below
highlights the major components of the workspace. However, more
familiarity will be achieved once when the users work with actual data.

Fig 3.3 Tableau Workspace

 CHAPTER III CONTENTS

45

To begin working with Tableau, data source to be connected. Tableau is

com- patible with a lot of data sources. The data sources supported by
Tableau appear on the left side of the opening screen. Some commonly
used data sources are excel, text file, relational database or even on a
server. One can also connect to a cloud database source such as Google
Analytics, Amazon Redshift, etc.
One of the sample dataset is superstore data set that comes pre-
loaded with Tableau. The data is that of a superstore. It contains information
about products, sales, profits, etc. The aim of data analysts is to analyze the
data and find critical areas of improvement within this fictitious company.
Tableau provides convenient options for building time series charts.
The built-in date and time functions allow the user to use the drag-and-drop
option to create and analyze time trends, drill down with a click, and easily
perform trend analysis compa- risons. Dimensions are qualitative data, such
as a name or date. By default, Tableau automatically classifies data that
contains qualitative or categorical information as a dimension, for example,
any field with text or date values. These fields generally appear as column
headers for rows of data, such as Customer Name or Order Date, and also
define the level of granularity that shows in the view.
Measures are quantitative numerical data. By default, Tableau treats
any field containing this kind of data as a measure, for example, sales
transactions or profit. Data that is classified as a measure can be
aggregated based on a given dimension, for example, total sales (Measure)
by region (Dimension). Aggregation is the row-level data rolled up to a
higher
Step Start Tableau
1: category, such as the sum of sales or total profit. Tableau automa-
tically
Step 2:sorts
Getthe
intofields in Measures
Tableau workspaceand Dimensions.
Step 3: Connecting to a Data Source -Sample-Superstore data set
Step 4:3.1.3 Procedure
Go to toClick
the worksheet. Create
on theTime Series
tab sheet1 Chart
at the bottominleft of
Tableau the tableau workspace as shown in fig 3.4.

Fig 3.4 Worksheet in Tableau

4 Introduction to Data Visualization
6 Tools

Step 5: In the worksheet, from Dimension under the Data pane, drag
the Order Date to the Column shelf. (On dragging the Order Date
to the columns shelf, a column for each year of Orders is created
in the dataset. An ‘Abc’ indicator is visible under each column
which implies that text or numerical or text data can be dragged
here. On the other hand, if the Sales pulled here, a cross-tab
would be created which would show the total Sales for each year.)
Step 6: Similarly, from the Measures tab, drag the Sales field onto the Rows
shelf. (Tableau populates a chart with sales aggregated as a sum.
Total aggregated sales for each year by order date is displayed.
Tableau always populates a line chart as shown in fig 3.5 for a view
that includes time-field which in this example is Order Date.)

Fig 3.5 Line Chart for Aggregated Sales for Each Year
Step 7: In the chart above, the display is in years. To further drill down to
quarter and month levels, click on the plus icon on the order date
in the Columns shelf. This will generate the following output, which
now displays the data broken down to the month and quarter level
as shown in fig 3.6.
 CHAPTER III CONTENTS 4
7

Fig 3.6 Line Chart for Aggregated Sales for Each Month
and Quarter Level
The above chart is useful, but it is displayed in a discrete format. It
will be more beneficial if the data is displayed in continuous form.

Step 8: To convert the chart into a continuous format time series chart, the
first step is to roll up the YEAR (Order Date) back to year level, and
then the second step is to right-click on it and select the Year and
Continuous options as shown in fig 3.7.

Fig 3.7 Converting Discrete to Continuous Line Chart

4 Introduction to Data Visualization
8 Tools

Step 9: Drill down to quarter and Month level as in step 7 by changing the
Columns shelf from YEAR (Order Date) to MONTH (Order Date). This
will generate a monthly time series chart. From an analytics
perspective, this chart shown in fig 3.8 is more insightful as it
allows us to see the sales fluctuations across months and years.
This is also useful for decomposing the seasonality and trend
compo- nents of the time series data.

Fig 3.8 Time-Series Chart For Sales Analysis for Each Month
Step 10: Change the Path Property by going into the Marks shelf and
clicking on the Path option. There are three options for the type of
line graph for the view, and selecting the second option will
produce the chart as shown in fig 3.9. The output is like the
previous chart, but the trend shifts are more pronounced now.

Fig 3.9 Time-Series Chart in Different Path Property

 CHAPTER III CONTENTS 4
9

Step 11: Adding Categories to Time Series

A time series chart with two variables, Sales and time can be further
improved by adding more variables to a chart. For instance, it could be
useful to visualize sales by segment across time. This can be done easily in
two ways. First, simply drag the Seg- ment field to the Color pane in the
Marks shelf. The second method is to move the category to the Rows shelf
to show it separately as shown in fig 3.10.

Fig 3.10 Time Series Chart With Sales with Different Category

2. S C O R E C A R D S
1. Introduction
Scorecards offer organizations a snapshot of their current performance
when compared to their goals. They are useful tools for organizations which
need to manage performance and make strategic decisions better based on
the distance between cur- rent performance and the goal. As such,
scorecards present a more static view of an organization at a point in time
rather than a dynamic hub to monitor success.
Scorecards are most commonly used to track KPIs, as they focus on
both the cur- rent status of the metric being tracked and the target value.
However, scorecards aren’t live, so data is not updated in real-time. Instead,
scorecards serve to monitor strategic goals relative to KPIs and to make
decisions on a larger scale.
These decisions can include tracking the progress of a set strategy,
measuring the efficiency of particular teams or departments towards
meeting goals or even iden- tifying problems and how they can be resolved.
Scorecards are generally periodic mea- sures, usually updated at set
intervals such as weekly or monthly.
50 Introduction to Data Visualization Tools

For example, a scorecard can summarize total sales, average bounce

rate, count of ad impressions, maximum hold time, minimum failure rate,
etc. Scorecards in Google Data Studio appear as numbers, and, optionally,
the name of the metric being summari- zed. The format of the displayed
number depends on how the metric is configured in the data source. For
example, the data source for a fictional pet store contains the following
metrics. The Qty Sold metric is simply a number coming from the data set.
The Avg Qty Sold metric is a duplicate of the Qty Sold field, with the Average
aggregation type. Total Items, and Unique Items are calculated fields as given
in table below as well as Score- cards for these metrics are shown in fig
3.11.Name Calculation Aggregation
Type

Qty Sold none Sum

Avg Qty Sold none Average
Total Items COUNT(Items) Auto
Unique Items COUNT_ Auto
DISTINCT(Items
)

Fig 3.11 Sample scorecard

2. Scorecard Vs Dashboard
 Dashboards offer a broad way to track strategic goals and measure a
company’s overall efficiency. Scorecards, on the other hand, provide a
quick and concise way to measure KPIs and give a clear indication of
how well organizations are working to achieve their targets.
 Dashboards provide dynamic data i.e., Data is constantly updated,
giving orga- nizations an opportunity to track their operational
performance in real time. but scorecard provides static data
 Dashboards are used daily in organizations as they offer a more
operational view of success than scorecards’ focus on strategic goals.
 Scorecards are ideal for a concise view of a specific area. It is used to
determine how well marketing KPIs are being met, and illuminates
how close or far they are from their goals. This can be useful to
identify areas for improvement or ways to make specific tasks more
efficient. Dashboards are advantageous to provide a bird’s-eye view of
the organization’s operations.
 Scorecards and dashboards are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Choose carefully according to the need of the business.
 CHAPTER III CONTENTS

51

 Dashboards and scorecards don’t have to be separate entities.

Scorecards can also be included in dashboards, offering an individual
location to view multiple KPIs and their accompanying progress.

3. BULLET C H A RT
1. Introduction
In data visualization, there are situations where a single value data to
be compa- red to target value and also indicate if it is good, bad or
excellent, and all this in a limited space. A bullet chart is very useful for such
kind of situations. A bullet graph is a variation of a bar graph developed by
Stephen Few. The bullet chart serves as a replacement for dashboard gauges
and meters. A sample bullet chart in fig 3.12 representing the per-
formance of sales representatives against their target as well as color coded
to indicate their performance is ok or good or excellent.

Fig 3.12 Sample bullet chart

3.3.2 Components of Bullet Chart

The Bullet graph consists of 5 primary components as in
figure 3.13.

Fig 3.13 Components of Bullet Chart

5 Introduction to Data Visualization
2 Tools
 Text label: X axis and Y axis unit of measurement.
 Quantitative Scale: Measures the value of metric (eg. sales value) on a
linear axis.
 The Performance Measure: The bar that displays the primary
performance measure (eg: Sales).
 Comparative Measure: Target value
 Qualitative Scale: The background color fill that encodes qualitative
ranges like bad, satisfactory and good.

3.3.3 Types of Bullet chart

A bullet graph can be either horizontal or vertical depending on the
alignment of the quantitative scale as shown in fig 3.14. The choice of
vertical or horizontal alignment depends on the available space for the
visualization.

Fig 3.14 Sample Horizontal and Vertical bullet chart

When a set of bullet graphs are displayed together and they include some
measures that are considered good when they are high (eg: revenue) and others
that are considered good when they are low (eg: expenses)
While plotting single measures, it is considered that target as the point
which a measure should reach or exceed. While this works for measures like
revenue and pro- fit, for other measures like expenses, the situation is
reversed. Expenses have to stay below target to be optimum.
In the chart above, the background fill uses the darkest color for poor
perfor- mance and the lightest color for best performance. It works for
revenue, new customers and avg. order size but not for expenses. Usually
while color coding the qualitative scale, distinct intensities from dark to
light of a single hue are used. Darker color intensi- ties for the poor states
and the lighter color intensities for the favorable states are used.
 CHAPTER III CONTENTS

53

4. Advantages and Disadvantage of Bullet Chart

The advantages of using bullet graphs in place of gauges on the
dashboard are:
 It can be oriented horizontally or vertically, depending upon the
real estate available
 It can display multiple measures
 Information is presented in an easier to digest
format The disadvantages of bullet graphs are:
 Too much is going on in a single graph, and can quickly confuse a
person new to data visualization
 It is difficult for the reader to understand how big the variation is
 The background, with many shades of one color, is distracting to the
reader

5.
Step 1:Procedure
Open Tableauto create
Desktop bullet
and chart
connect to thein Tableau
Sample - Superstore data
Step 2: source.will
The procedure Navigate
enable to a new
the user worksheet.
to find the size of profits for the
Step 3: From the Data pane, under Dimensions,
respective sales figures in each Sub-Category drag and
for the Sample drop Sub-
- Superstore
Category to the Columns shelf
data source.
Step 4: Drag and drop the Measures Profit and Sales to the Rows shelf and
observe the chart appears as in fig 3.15 which shows the two
measures as two sepa- rate categories of bar charts, each
representing the values for sub-categories.

Fig 3.15 Two categories of bar chart

Step 5: Drag the sales measure to the Marks card. Using Show Me, choose
the bullet graph option. Observe the shown bullet graph as given in
fig 3.16.
5 Introduction to Data Visualization
4 Tools

Fig 3.16 Bullet graph

4. A R EA C H A RT
1. Introduction
An area chart or area graph is basically a line graph with the area below
the lined filled with colors or textures. Like line graphs, area charts are used to
represent the development of quantitative values over a time period. Area
charts often used to show overall trends over time rather than specific
values. For example, for the quarterly sales data for five years, to do
comparison of sales column or bar chart is used. But to show the trend of
how the sales values have changed over the years, time series chart or an
area chart is useful. Area charts are commonly used to showcase data that
depicts a time-series rela- tionship. A sample area chart is shown in fig
3.17. The area chart can be visualized in
two ways:
 One with data plots overlapping each other
 Another with data plots stacked on top of each other

Fig 3.17 Sample area chart

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55

3.4.2 Line chart Vs Area Chart

Both line chart and area chart can be used interchangeably. A sample
line chart and area chart for the same data is shown in fig 3.18. But there
are few differences, which are discussed below.

Fig 3.18 Line chart Vs Area chart

 A line chart would be good for showing net change in population over
time, while an area chart would be good for showing the total
population over time. The filled area below the line can help to
indicate that it is a physically countable amount.
 Line charts and area charts are very closely related. They are both
good for time series data. They both show continuity across a dataset.
They are both good for seeing trends rather than individual values.
 Line charts are good at showing multiple different series and
comparing them against each other. They can support up to about
seven lines in a static version; interactive versions can go higher. Area
charts are not as good at comparing between that many areas
because they have problems with occlusion.
 Use line charts to compare several data series, or for individual
intangible values like rates. Use area charts for multiple data series
with part to whole relationships, or for individual series representing a
physically countable set, or cumulative series of values.

3.4.3 Procedure to create an area chart in Tableau

Step 1: Open Tableau Desktop and connect to the Sample - Superstore data
Step 2: source. Navigate to a new worksheet.
Step 3: From the Data pane, under Dimensions, drag Order Date to the
Step 4: Columns shelf On the Columns shelf, right-click YEAR(Order Date)
and select Month as shown in fig 3.19.
5 Introduction to Data Visualization
6 Tools

Fig 3.19 Drill down to Month Sales

Step 5: From the Data pane, under Measures, drag Quantity to the Rows
Step 6: shelf. From the Date pane, under Dimensions, drag Ship Mode to
Color on the Marks card.
Step 7: On the Marks card, click the Mark Type drop-down and select Area
as given in fig 3.20 and observe the chart visualization changes to
display ship mode details for monthly order data.

Fig 3.20 Selecting Area Chart in Mark Type and visualization

 CHAPTER III CONTENTS

57

Step 8: Add formatting to an area chart (if required), using Format menu.
Choose the part of the view that is to be formatted, such as Font,
Borders, or Filters.
Step 9: Add a highlight action using the highlight button in the toolbar if
required.

R E V IEW Q U E S T I O N S
1. Create the Procedure to Create Time Series Chart in Tableau
2. Differentiate between Scorecard Vs Dashboard.
3. What are the Components of Bullet Chart?
4. Explain the advantages and disadvantages of Bullet Chart.
5. Discuss the uses of area chart.
6. Demonstrate the procedure to create bullet chart in Tableau
7. Compare and contrast Line chart Vs Area Chart.
8. Write the procedure to create an area chart in Tableau
9. Explain the uses of times series chart with suitable example.
10. How to Connect a Data Source in tableau? Explain.
11. Create a table with your own data set and draw the time-series chart
for sales analysis for each Month.
 CHAPTER
IV

1. HEAT M A P
1. Introduction
Heat maps originated in 2D displays of the values in a data matrix.
Larger values were represented by small dark gray or black squares (pixels)
and smaller values by lighter squares. Software designer Cormac Kinney
trademarked the term heat map to describe a 2D display depicting financial
market information.
Heat maps visualize data through variations in colouring. When
applied to a tabular format, Heat maps are useful for cross-examining
multivariate data, through placing variables in the rows and columns and
colouring the cells within the table. Heat maps are good for showing
variance across multiple variables, revealing any patterns, displaying
whether any variables are similar to each other, and for detecting if any cor-
relations exist in-between them.
The cells in the data matrix, either contain categorical data (eg., Male
or Female) or numerical data (eg., 10, 50). Categorical data is colour-coded,
while numerical data requires a colour scale that blends from one colour to
another, in order to represent the difference in high and low values. A
selection of solid colours can be used to represent multiple value ranges (0-
10, 11-20, 21-30, etc) or a gradient scale for a single range (for example 0 -
100) by blending two or more colours together. A sample heat map is
shown in fig 4.1.

Fig. 4.1 Sample Heat Map Chart

60 Introduction to Data Visualization Tools

A density heat map is used to analyze the areas in a plot where data
points are dense or scattered. Heat maps are specifically used where there is
a huge data set with overlapping data values. This helps the analyst to see
the areas with greater density and discover data trends. A sample heat map
shown in fig 4.2 visualizes the visitor’s behaviour on a web page and
provides clue on where the most important content to be placed.

Fig 4.2 Heat map showing visitors behaviour on a web page

2. Uses of Heat Map

 Heat maps are good for showing variance across multiple variables,
revealing any patterns, displaying whether any variables are similar to
each other, and for detecting if any correlations exist in-between
them.
 Heat maps can also be used to show the changes in data over time
 Heat maps are used to indicate the weight of each point in the
geographical range. It is usually displayed in a special highlight.

3. Procedure to C reate Heat Map in Tableau

The procedure provides steps to create a density heat map using
sample dataset pertaining to sales in an electronics store. The following
requirements are to be consi- dered before creating heat map, which are,
 Rows: At least one measure or dimension
 Columns: At least one continuous measure
 CHAPTER IV CONTENTS 6
1
 Mark type: Density
 Marks card: At least one
Step 1:dimension
Start Tableau.
Step 2: Connect to Data Source Electronic Store Sales.
Step 3: Add Measure Profit to the Columns section as shown in
fig 4.3.

Fig 4.3 Add to the columns section

Step 4: Select the aggregation type as AVG as shown in fig 4.4, that is, an
average of the field values. Also, make sure that the measure is
continuous type.

Fig 4.4 Select average measure

6 Introduction to Data Visualization
2 Tools

Step 5: Next Add Measure Sales to Rows Section and again select Average
of the field values. Observe the chart as shown in fig 4.5, an empty
plot with two axes appears on the canvas.

Fig 4.5 An empty plot of Chart

Step 6: Add Dimension Field State into Detail card present in Marks section.
This will add a group circle representing different states on the plot
showing average sales and average profit for each state as shown
in fig 4.6.

Fig 4.6 Adding a Dimension

Step 7: To convert this plot into a density heat map, select the Shape as
Density. This will change the shape of data points from circles to
density spots. That is, the color scheme of data points will follow
a density gradient as shown in fig 4.7.
 CHAPTER IV CONTENTS

63

The regions with most data points or dense regions will be in

red/orange whereas, the areas with lesser or scattered data points
Step 8:
appear in greenish- blue shades. The color schemes can be
modified for heat maps.
Right-click on Color card and set the intensity, opacity and
other border effects for the heat map as given in fig 4.7. Select the
color scheme from a long list of available options.

Fig 4.7 Color scheme for heat map

Step 9: Using size in Mark type, increasing or decreasing the size of density
spots in heat map is shown in fig 4.8.

Fig 4.8 Increase or Decrease the density spots

64 Introduction to Data Visualization Tools

2. G E O M A P
1. Introduction -Need of map visualization
There are many reasons to put the data on a map. The user can
choose map, if the data is location data or looking for a report relating to a
location. Map visualization can be used when there is a need to find
answers to spatial questions such as,
 Which state has the most farmers markets?
 Where are the regions in the India with the high obesity rates?
 Which metro station is the busiest for each metro line in Chennai?
Geo Maps represent a family of geospatial visualizations that change
according to data type.
 If variables are coordinates (longitude, latitude) or city-specific, the
user can get a dot map or bubble map.
 If variables are shapes or areas (e.g. states, countries, continents),
the user can get a Choropleth map, Choropleth Maps are geospatial
visualizations that use shape files, or polygons of geographic areas as
given in fig 4.9. Choropleth maps allow each area to represent
quantitative data using fill saturation. In other words, typically, the
higher the quantity, the darker the area.

Fig 4.9 Choropleth map (Polygon Shape)

2. Uses of Geo map

Combining geospatial information with data over time creates a
greater scope of understanding. Some benefits of using maps in data
visualization include:
 A greater ability to more easily understand the distribution of the
organization’s presence across the city, state, or country
 The ability to compare the activity across several locations at a glance
 More intuitive decision making for company leaders
 Contextualizing the data in the real world
 CHAPTER IV CONTENTS

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3. Types of maps
Many types of map visualization can be made using different
visualization tools, some of them are,
 Proportional symbol maps
 Choropleth maps (filled maps)
 Point distribution maps
 Heat maps (density maps)
 Flow maps (path maps)
 Spider maps (origin-destination maps)
Proportional symbol maps are great for showing quantitative data for
individual locations. For example, earthquakes around the world and size
them by magnitude using symbol map. Choropleth maps known as filled
maps, different from heap maps. Choropleth maps are great for showing
ratio data. Geo maps are used to show the measure details of different
regions using color code. More value shown by darker color and less value
are shown by light color.

4. Procedure to create Geo map / Symbol map in

Tableau
Creating map involves many tasks such as
 Connecting to data source
 Joining geographic data
 Formatting geographic data
Step Start Tableau.
 1:Creating location hierarchies
 Building andtopresenting
Step 2: Connect data source Sample
a basic – Superstore
map view Data.
Step (Joining)
 3:Applying On
key the left features
mapping side of the Data Source page, under Sheets,
double- click Orders. Next Under Sheets, double-click People. Tableau
creates an inner-join between the two spreadsheets, using the Region
column from both spreadsheets as the joining field. To edit this join,
click the join icon (the two cir- cles), if required edit the join in the
Join dialog box that opens as shown in fig 4.10.

Fig 4.10 Join Dialog Box

6 Introduction to Data Visualization
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Step 4: (Formatting) Depending on the type of map to create, assign

certain data types, data roles, and geographic roles to the fields
(or columns). On the Data Source page, click the data type icon
(the globe) for Postal Code and select String as shown in fig 4.11.

Fig 4.11 Formatting data type

Step 5: On the Data Source page, click Sheet 1. Observe the worksheet as
in fig 4.12 with generated Latitude and Longitude fields in
Measures. It indicates that the data is ready with geographic roles
to prepare map.

Fig 4.12 Preparing Geographic roles

Step 7: In the Data pane, under Dimensions, select a field, such as Row
ID, and drag it down to the Measures section. The field is added
to the Measures
 CHAPTER IV CONTENTS

67

section and changes from blue to green. A Dimension field is

Step 8:
converted to a Measure.
Create a geographic hierarchy. Creating a geographic hierarchy
allows the user to quickly drill into the levels of geographic detail
Step 8.1: In the Data pane, right-click the geographic field, Country,
the data contains, in the specified order.
and then select Hierarchy > Create Hierarchy.
Step 8.2: In the Create Hierarchy dialog box that opens, give the
hierarchy a name, such as Mapping Items, and then click
OK. At the bottom of the Dimensions section, the
Mapping Items hierarchy is created with the Country
Step 8.3: field.
In the Data pane, drag the State field to the hierarchy
Step 8.4: and place it below the Country field.
Repeat
Step 9: Build a basic step
map. In8.3
theforData
the City
pane,and Postal Code fields.
double-click Country. The
Country field is added to Detail on the Marks card, and Latitude
(generated) and Longitude (generated) are added to the Columns
and Rows shelves. A map view with one data point is created.
Since a geographic role is assigned to Country, Tableau creates a
map view. Double-click any other field, such as a dimension or
measure, Tableau adds that field to the Rows or Columns shelf, or
the Marks card, depending on what the user already have in the
view. Geographic fields are always placed on Detail on the Marks
card, however.

Step 10: On the Marks card, click the + icon on the Country field. The State
field is added to Detail on the Marks card and the map updates to
include a data point for every state in the data source as in fig
4.13.
6 Introduction to Data Visualization
8 Tools

Fig 4.13 Add Details on the Marks Card

Step 11: From Measures, drag Sales to Color on the Marks card. Each state is
colored by sum of sales. Since Sales is a measure, a qualitative
color palette is used. Place a dimension on color, then a categorical
color palette is used as in fig 4.14.

Fig 4.14 Categorical color palette for Geographical map

Step 12: From Measures, drag Sales to Label on the Marks card. Each state is
labeled with sum of sales. The numbers need a little bit of
formatting, In the Data pane, right-click Sales and select Default
Properties > Number Format. In the Default Number Format dialog box
that opens, select Number (Custom), and then do the following as in
fig 4.15,
 CHAPTER IV CONTENTS 6
9

Fig 4.15 Numbers are mapped in Geographical areas

Step 12: From the Show Me Pane, select Geo map / Symbol map for
different visualization. Customize the background map using
map menu item if required.

3. S Y M B O L M A P
1. Introduction
Symbol Maps are simply maps that have a mark displayed over a
given Longitude and Latitude. Using the “Marks” card in Tableau the user
can quickly build up a powerful visual that informs users about their data
in relation to its location. These types of maps are called proportional
symbol maps. Proportional symbol maps are great for showing
quantitative values for individual locations. They can show one or two
quantitative values per location (one value encoded with size, and, if
necessary, another encoded with color). For example, the user can plot
earthqua- kes recorded from 1981 to 2014 around the world, and size
them by magnitude as shown in fig 4.16. The user can also color the data
points by magnitude for additio- nal visual detail.
7 Introduction to Data Visualization
0 Tools

Fig 4.16 Visualization of Earthquake using Symbol Map

4.3.2 Procedure to create Symbol Map

Step 1: Start Tableau
Step 2: Connect to Earthquake data source as given in table
below.
Earth- ID Magnitude Magnitude^10 Latitude Longitude

quake
Date
Time

1/1/73 centennial1973010111423 6.00000 17,488,747.0 -35.570 -15.427

5 4
1/2/73 pde19730102005320300_ 5.50000 25,329,516.2 -9.854 117.427
66 1
1/3/73 pde19730103022942800_ 4.80000 6,492,506.21 1.548 126.305
33
1/4/73 pde19730104003142000_ 4.50000 3,405,062.89 41.305 -29.272
33
1/5/73 pde19730105003948200_ 4.70000 5,259,913.22 0.683 -80.018
36
1/6/73 pde19730106061852300_ 4.90000 7,979,226.63 -22.354 -69.310
83
 CHAPTER IV CONTENTS 7
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Basic map building

blocks:
Columns Longitude (continuous measure, longitude geographic role
shelf: assigned)
Rows shelf: Latitude (continuous measure, latitude geographic role
assigned)
Detail: One or more dimensions
Size: Measure (aggregated)
Mark type: Automatic
Step 3: Open a new worksheet. In the Data pane, under Measures, double-
click Lati- tude and Longitude. Latitude is added to the Rows shelf,
and Longitude is added to the Columns shelf. A map view with one
Step 4: data point is created.
From Dimensions, drag ID to Detail on the Marks card. If a warning
dialog appears, click Add all members. A lower level of detail is
added to the view as shown in Fig 4.17.

Fig 4.17 Add members in a map

7 Introduction to Data Visualization
2 Tools

Step 5: From Measures, drag Magnitude^10 to Size on the Marks card. The
Magni- tude^10 field is used to encode size, instead of the
Magnitude field. This is because Magnitude^10 contains a wider
range of values, so the differences between values can be seen
visually. A proportional symbol map appears as in fig 4.18. The
larger data points represent earthquakes with larger magnitudes,
and the smaller data points represent earthquakes with smaller
magnitudes.

Fig 4.18 Symbol map appears as small and larger data points as per the
proportion of the Earthquake Magnitude
Step 6: From Measures, drag Magnitude to Color on the
Step 7: Marks card. On the Marks card, click Color > Edit
Step 8: Colors.
 ClickIn the Edit
colorColors dialogand
drop-down box,select
do the following:
the Orange-Blue Diverging palette
from the list.
 Select Stepped Color, and then enter 8. This creates eight colors: four
shades of orange, and four shades of blue.
 Select Reversed. This reverses the palette so that orange represents a
higher magnitude than blue.
 Click Advanced, select Center, and then enter 7. This shifts the color
palette and ensures that any earthquake over 7.0 magnitudes will
appear orange in color, and any earthquake under 7.0 magnitudes will
appear blue in color.
 Click OK.
Step 9: On the Marks card, click Color again, and then do the following: For
Opacity, enter 70%. Under Effects, click the Border drop-down
menu and select a dark blue border color. The map view updates
with new colors. The dark orange
 CHAPTER IV CONTENTS

73

data points represent earthquakes with higher magnitudes, while

the dark blue data points represent earthquakes with lower
magnitudes. The opacity of the marks is at 70% allows to see
where the data points overlap as in fig 4.19.

Fig 4.19 Enhance the visualization by using boundary colors and opacity
Step 10: On the Marks card, right-click the ID field and select Sort.
Step 11: In the Sort dialog box, do the following: For Sort Order, select
Descending. For Sort By, select Field, and then click the drop-down
and select Magnitude. Click OK. This sorts the data points in the
view so that the larger magnitudes appear on top. Observe the
completed proportional symbol map as in fig 4.20.

Fig 4.20 Proportional Symbol Map

74 Introduction to Data Visualization Tools

4.4 FILLED M A P
Filled maps in Tableau are similar to symbol maps, but they include
many more data points. While a symbol map draws a symbol at the
intersection of each latitude and longitude pair, filled maps draw a polygon
around the entire border. A filled map colored by region in Tableau is shown
in fig 4.21.

Fig 4.21 Sample Filled Map

Filled maps are one of the easier chart types to create in Tableau using
Show Me. To create a filled map in Tableau, simply click a geographic
dimension (identified by a globe icon) from the Dimensions Shelf and
choose ‘filled maps’ under Show Me. To create a filled map manually,
double-click on the geographic dimension for State in the Sales –
Superstore data set that comes with Tableau.

Fig 4.22 Default symbol map for each state

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75

By default, Tableau generates a symbol map, placing a circle at the

intersection of Longitude and Latitude for each state as given in fig 4.22.
First, Longitude is on the Columns Shelf, which can also be thought of as the
X-axis. Conversely, Latitude is on the Rows Shelf, or the Y-axis. On the Marks
Shelf, State is the most granular level of detail in the view.
In order to change this from a symbol map to a filled map, change the
mark type from ‘Automatic’ to ‘Filled Map’. By selecting this special mark
type in Tableau, the sin- gle circles on each state have been converted to
nice, smooth polygons that trace the entire border of each state. Then
encode the filled map by color by placing a field on the Color Marks Card. To
color the territories by a measure such as Sales or Profit, color the marks by
a dimension. The filled map view will appear as in fig 4.23.

Fig 4.23 Sales or Profit based colored Filled map

5. E D I T I N G LO C AT I O N I N M A P
In Geo map or symbol map, sometimes Tableau will not recognize one
or more of the location names in the geological data. When this happens
those values are marked as unknown in the lower right corner of the map
view. This may happen if there is a location or abbreviation that Tableau
does not recognize or if the location is ambiguous and could exist in
multiple places. When this happens, additional information can be added to
the view to define locations, or unknown location names can be edited to
map to known locations.

1. Add more fields to view

If the data set includes ambiguous locations (for example, “Aberdeen,”
which could appear in multiple states or countries), adding another
geographic field, like State
76 Introduction to Data Visualization Tools

or Country, to the view defines the correct location for that data. If there is
a hierarchy in the data pane, Tableau will automatically use the appropriate
levels of the hierarchy to solve location ambiguities.

2. Edit locations in the Special Values menu

Sometimes, unknown locations can be prompted because there’s a
misspelling or another issue. When this happens, we can correct the
unknown or ambiguous loca- tions in the data using the Special Values menu
ad given below.
 In the bottom right corner of the view, click the special values
indicator that lists the number of unknown locations in your map. This
opens the Special Values menu.
 In the Special Values dialog box, select Edit Locations. If the special
values indicator is not visible, select Map > Edit Locations as shown in
fig 4.24.

Fig 4.24 Edit Locations Menu Item

4.5.3 Edit ambiguous locationsv

Both unrecognized and ambiguous locations can be listed in the Edit
Locations dialog box. Some ambiguous locations can be fixed by
mentioning the Country/ Region and/or State/Province for each city from a
specific field in the data, either by hard-coding a value if the data only
spans one state or country, or by telling Tableau which fields to refer to
for that information. This option is in the Geographic Roles section of the
Edit Locations dialog box. For example, if we have several cities that
are ambiguous, we can specify a State/Province to fix them as shown in
fig 4.25.
 CHAPTER IV CONTENTS 7
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Fig 4.25 Ambiguous regions solved by selecting state or province

If there are ambiguous or unknown locations in the Country/Region or
State/Pro- vince tabs in the Edit Locations menu, fixing those first may
resolve some ambiguous locations in smaller geographic roles, such as
cities.

4.5.4 Edit unknown locations

In the Edit Locations dialog box, click on one of the Unrecognized cells
to match a known location to the unknown data. When we click on an
unrecognized cell, a search box appears. As we begin typing in the search
box, Tableau generates a list of possible locations. Select a location from the
list as shown in fig 4.26.

Fig 4.26 Solving unknown locations

78 Introduction to Data Visualization Tools

Alternatively, we can enter latitude and longitude to manually map

a value to a point location on the map. To do this, begin typing into the
unrecognized cell and select Enter Latitude and Longitude from the drop-
down menu as given in fig 4.27. When we type a latitude and longitude,
enter the values in decimal format. For example, Addis Ababa is Latitude:
9.033140, Longitude: 38.750080.

Fig 4.27 Latitude and Longitude of a location

Summary
In Data Visualization Tools, map charts are very effective in visualizing
the geo- graphical data for providing real world scenario to the business
people.

R E VIEW Q U E S T I O N S
1. Discuss about the Uses of heat map.
2. How to create tableau heat map?
3. Why we need map visualization?
4. List out the uses of Geo map.
5. When should you use a map to represent your data?
6. What is latitude and longitude on a map?
7. Tableau is revolutionizing data analysis and has truly made geographic
analysis accessible to everyone. Comment your views.
8. Elucidate the salient features of categorical color palette for
geographical map.
9. Discuss about the different types of maps in geo map.
 CHAPTER IV CONTENTS

79

10. Explain about join dialog box in geo map.

11. Explain the tasks involved in Geo map /symbol map in tableau
12. Elaborate the procedure to create a symbol Map in tableau.
13. Create a density heat map using your sample dataset pertaining to sales
in an elec- tronics store.
14. Compare and contrast heap map and symbol map in tableau.
15. Create a table for Earthquake data source and visualize using the symbol
map.
 CHAPTER
V

1. D A S H B OA R D
1. Introduction
Today, the use of dashboards forms an important part of decision
making. In information technology, a dashboard is an easy to read, often
single page, real-time user interface, showing a graphical presentation of
the current status (snapshot) and historical trends of an organization’s or
department’s key performance indicators to ena- ble instantaneous and
informed decisions to be made at a glance.

2. Dashboard – Definition
Stephen Few has defined a dashboard as “A visual display of the most
important information needed to achieve one or more objectives which fits entirely on a
single computer screen so it can be monitored at a glance”.
In the present terms, a dashboard can be defined as a data visualization
tool that displays the current status of metrics and key performance indicators
(KPIs) simplifying com- plex data sets to provide users with at a glance
awareness of current performance. Dashbo- ards consolidate and arrange
numbers and metrics on a single screen. They can be tailored for a specific
role and display metrics of a department or an organization on the whole.
Dashboards can be static for a one-time view, or dynamic showing the
consolidated results of the data changes behind the screen. They can also be
made interactive to display the various segments of large data on a single
screen. A sample dashboard is shown in fig 5.1.

Fig 5.1 Sample Dashboard

82 Introduction to Data Visualization Tools

3. Key Metrics for Dashboard

The core of the dashboard lies in the key metrics required for
monitoring. Thus, based on whether the dashboard is for an organization on
the whole or for a department such as sales, finance, human resources,
production, etc. the key metrics that are requi- red for display vary.
Further, the key metrics for a dashboard also depend on the role of the
recipients (audience), for example, Executive (CEO, CIO, etc.), Operations
Manager, Sales Head, Sales Manager, etc. This is due to the fact that the
primary goal of a dashboard is to enable data visualization for decision
making.
The success of a dashboard often depends on the metrics that were
chosen for monitoring. For example, Key Performance Indicators, Balanced
Scorecards and Sales Performance Figures could be the content appropriate
in business dashboards.

4. Benefits of Dashboard
Dashboards allow managers to monitor the contribution of the various
departments in the organization. To monitor the organization’s overall
performance, dashboards allow you to capture and report specific data
points from each of the departments in the organization, providing a
snapshot of current performance and a comparison with earlier
performance.
Benefits of dashboards include the following,
 Customizable, Interactive, Predictive and great story teller of data
 Visual presentation of performance measures.
 Ability to identify and correct negative trends.
 Measurement of efficiencies /inefficiencies.
 Ability to generate detailed reports showing new trends.
 Ability to make more informed decisions based on collected data.
 Alignment of strategies and organizational goals.
 Instant visibility of all systems in total.
 Quick identification of data outliers and correlations.
 Time saving with the comprehensive data visualization than
running multiple reports.

5. Types of Dashboards
Dashboards can be categorized based on their utility as follows,
 Strategic Dashboards
 Analytical Dashboards
 CHAPTER V CONTENTS 8
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 Operational Dashboards
 Informational Dashboards

Strategic Dashboards
Strategic dashboards support managers at any level in an organization
for deci- sion making. They provide the snapshot of data, displaying the
health and opportunities of the business, focusing on the high level
measures of performance and forecasts.
 Strategic dashboards require to have periodic and static snapshots of
data (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually). They need
not be constantly changing from one moment to the next and require
an update at the specified intervals of time.
 They portray only the high level data not necessarily giving the details.
 They can be interactive to facilitate comparisons and different views in
case of large data sets at the click of a button. But, it is not necessary
to provide more interactive features in these dashboards.
A screenshot given in fig 5.2 shows an example of an executive
dashboard which displaying goals and progress.

Fig 5.2 Executive Dashboard

Analytical Dashboards
Analytical dashboards include more context, comparisons and history.
They focus on the various facets of data required for analysis. Analytical
dashboards typically support interactions with the data, such as drilling
down into the underlying details and hence should be interactive. Examples
of analytical dashboards include Finance Mana- gement dashboard and
Sales Management dashboard as shown in fig 5.3.
8 Introduction to Data Visualization
4 Tools

Fig 5.3 Analytical Dashboard for Finance and Sales Management

Operational Dashboards
Operational dashboards are for constant monitoring of operations. They
are often designed differently from strategic or analytical dashboards and
focus on monitoring of activities and events that are constantly changing
and might require attention and response at a moment’s notice. Thus,
operational dashboards require live and up to date data available at all
times and hence should be dynamic. An example of an ope- ration
dashboard could be a support-system dashboard, displaying live data on
service tickets that require an immediate action from the supervisor on
high-priority tickets as given in fig 5.4.

Fig 5.4 Sample Operational Dashboard

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Informational Dashboards
Informational dashboards are just for displaying figures, facts and/or
statistics. They can be either static or dynamic with live data but not
interactive. For example, flights arrival/departure information dashboard in
an airport as in fig 5.5.

Fig 5.5 Informational Dashboard for Airport Flight Arrival/Departure

6. Customized Dashboard
Depends on the data domain the dashboards are customized and
categorized
as,
 Business Dashboard
 Executive Dashboard
 KPI Dashboard
 Project Dashboard

Business Dashboard
In a way, virtually any dashboard used by a business falls into this
category. The term “business dashboard” specifically refers to reporting
tools that fulfill these purposes:
 Tracking important business metrics
 Monitoring business intelligence initiatives
 Reporting data to stakeholders
An effective business dashboard should focus on top-level data
related to the overall success of the business. In most cases, every metric
in the dashboard should
86 Introduction to Data Visualization Tools

support the business’ most important metric: the bottom line. The goal of a
business dashboard is to not only communicate data about the
business’ success, though; it facilitates understanding ad alignment
between departments, holds each team accountable for their goals and
progress, and helps users identify areas that need immediate action.

Executive Dashboard
An executive dashboard gathers and holds information that top-level
stakehol- ders need to run a company, business, or organization. Executive
dashboards function much like business dashboards, except the information
in them should cater specifically to the needs and expectations of
executives. Executives only have so much bandwidth to gather and
understand information, which means they need access to the information
they need, when they need it. Some key benefits include:
 Performance Management: An overview of how departments are
meeting their goals
 Scorecards: Insight regarding specific employee performance and
goals
 Visibility: Access to high-level goals and metrics related to the overall
success of the organization
 Time Management: Cohesive reports and drilldowns in one place,
accessible on any device

KPI Dashboard
KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are the heart and soul of the
organization’s performance. They are the stepping stones that will guide
your business to long-term success, so tracking and comparing them in one
place is vital. KPIs should be measu- rable, tangible metrics that let each
employee, team, and department understand how their performance
influences the success of the organization – and the KPI dashboard is where
these metrics are stored. A successful KPI dashboard should:
 Set tangible goals and targets for each department
 Facilitate accountability within each department
 Provide real-time updates on goals and progress

Project Dashboard
Much like KPI dashboards, project dashboards track tangible goals;
however, the goal of a project dashboard is not about hitting a sales quota
or increasing marketing revenue by a certain margin. Instead, project
dashboards track specific metrics related to the progress and complete of a
project. This means, project dashboards involve more scheduling metrics as,
 CHAPTER V CONTENTS

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 When does the project need to be completed?

 Does each team member have the bandwidth to complete his or her
portion of the project?
 What is the project budget? Is the project on pace to accommodate it?
These are the questions most – if not all – project managers ask
themselves on a daily basis. By having these metrics in one place, project
managers can avoid unneces- sary time logging into multiple data sources
and comparing information to get a simple progress report. With the help of
a project management dashboard, they can simply open the dashboard and
see exactly where the project stands, make accommodations or changes as
necessary, and provide an accurate assessment of when the project will be
complete.

2. CREAT I N G A DA S H B O A R D
1.
Step 1:Creating a Dashboard
Login & Create a Blank using Google Data Studio
Step 2: Report Add the First Data
The steps involved in creating the dashboard are the following:
Step 3: Source Add the Second
Step 4: Data Source Adding
Elements
Line Graphs / Time Series
 Pie Charts
 Scorecards
 Tables
Step 5: Adding Date Range Filter

5.2.2 C reating a dashboard in Tableau

Step 1: Start Tableau.
Step 2: Create a dashboard by clicking click the New Dashboard icon at the
bottom of the workbook as shown in Fig 5.6.

Fig 5.6 Dashboard Icon

Step 3 : From the Sheets list which were created already are shown at left,
drag views to the dashboard at right as given in fig 5.7.
8 Introduction to Data Visualization
8 Tools

Fig 5.7 Sheets list

Step 4: To replace a sheet, select it in the dashboard at right. In the

Sheets list at left, hover over the replacement sheet, and click the
Step 5: Swap Sheets button. Adding objects and set their options: The user
can add dashboard objects that add visual appeal and interactivity.
TheHorizontal
various objects are,
and Vertical objects provide layout containers that
allows to group related objects together and fine-tunes when
the dashboard resizes during user interaction.
 Web Page objects display target pages in the context of the
dashboard.
 Blank object helps to adjust spacing between dashboard items.
 Text objects serve can provide headers, explanations, and other
information.
 Button objects helps to navigate from one dashboard to another,
or to other sheets or stories. For the button style, choose an
image or text to indicate the button’s destination to the users.
 Image objects add to the visual flavor of a dashboard, and can
be linked to specific target URLs.
 Extension objects helps to add unique features to dashboards or
integrate them with applications outside Tableau.
To add an object in dashboard, Select an item under Objects on the left,
and drag it to the dashboard sheet on the right as given in fig 5.8.
 CHAPTER V CONTENTS 8
9

Fig 5.8 Add an object in Dashboard

To set options for objects, Click the object container to select it. Then
click the arrow in the upper corner to open the shortcut menu. (The menu
options vary depending on the object.) Detailed options for navigation
buttons: Button objects have several uni- que options that helps to visually
indicate the navigation destination as given in fig 5.9.

Fig 5.9 Navigation Button

A navigation button using text for the button style: In the upper corner
of a Button object, click the object menu, and choose Edit Button as in fig
5.10.

Fig 5.10 Edit button

9 Introduction to Data Visualization
0 Tools
 From the Navigate to menu, choose a sheet outside the current
dashboard.
 Choose image or text for Button Style, specify the image or text you
want to appear, and then set related formatting options.
 For Tooltip text, add explanatory text that appears when viewers hover
over the button. This text is optional and typically best used with
image buttons.
To add interactivity in the dashboard,
 In the upper corner of sheet, enable the Use as Filter option to use
selected marks in the sheet as filters for other sheets in the
dashboard as shown in fig 5.11.

Fig 5.11 Filter Options in Dashboard

Actions often have unique behavior when the source or destination is a

dashbo- ard. Because a dashboard can contain multiple views, a single filter
or highlight action can have broad impact. Dashboards can also contain
web page objects, which you can target with interactive URL actions. Use a
single view to filter other views in a dashbo- ard. Imagine the created
dashboard that contains three views about profitability: a map, a bar chart,
and a table of customer names. A filter action can be used to make one of
the views in the dashboard, such as the map, the “master.” When the
users select a region in the map, the data in the other views is filtered so
that it relates to just that region.

 On the dashboard, select the view that the user wants to use as a
filter.
 On the view’s shortcut menu, choose Use as Filter. Perform the same
action by clicking the Use as Filter icon as shown in fig 5.12.
 CHAPTER V CONTENTS 9
1

Fig 5.12 Shortcut menu for ‘use as Filter’

Use filter actions to filter the data on a dashboard when the data comes
from multiple data sources.

3. FORM AT TI N G A DA S H B O A R D
There is a need to resize and reorganize elements in a dashboard to
provide better appearance. There are many formatting options for
dashboard like, size, layout, rename, background, layout container, border
and shading.

1. Dashboard Size
There are different dashboard size options to control overall dashboard
size which are,
Fixed size (default): The dashboard remains the same size, regardless
of the size of the window used to display it. If the dashboard is larger than
the window, it becomes scrollable. You can pick from a preset size, such as
Desktop Browser (the default), Small Blog, and iPad. Fixed size dashboards
let you specify the exact location and posi- tion of objects, which can be
useful if there are floating objects. Select this setting if you know the
precise size at which your dashboard will be displayed. Published
dashboards that use a fixed size can load faster because they’re more likely
to use a cached version on the server. (Dashboards with variable sizes need
to be freshly rendered for every browser request.)
92 Introduction to Data Visualization Tools

Range: The dashboard scales between minimum and maximum sizes that
you specify. If the window used to display the dashboard is smaller than the
minimum size, scroll bars are displayed. If it’s larger than the maximum
size, white space is displayed. Use this setting when we are designing for
two different display sizes that need the same content and have similar
shapes such as small- and medium-sized browser windows. Range also
works well for mobile dashboards with vertical layouts, where the width may
change to account for different mobile device widths, but the height is fixed
to allow for vertical scrolling.
Automatic: The dashboard automatically resizes to fill the window used to
display it. Use this setting for Tableau to take care of any resizing. For best
results, use a tiled dashboard layout. In Tableau Desktop, we can create
dashboard layouts for different device types to create unique layouts
optimized for desktop computers, tablets, and phones. In addition to
adapting to different screen sizes, each device layout can contain different
items.

2. Steps to set overall dashboard size

 Under Size on the Dashboard pane, select the dashboard›s
dimensions (such as Desktop Browser) or sizing behavior (for example,
Automatic) as shown in fig 5.13.

Fig 5.13 Dashboard size setting

5.3.3 Group items using layout containers

Layout containers used to group related dashboard items together so
that user can quickly position them. When we change the size and
placement of items inside a container, other container items automatically
adjust.

Layout container types

A horizontal layout container resizes the width of the views and objects
it contains and a vertical layout container adjusts height as shown in fig
5.14.
 CHAPTER V CONTENTS 9
3

Fig 5.14 Dashboard layouts

To add a layout container

 Under Objects on the Dashboard pane, select Horizontal or Vertical.
 Drag the container to the dashboard.
 Add views and objects to the layout container.

Evenly distribute a layout container’s items

 Select the layout container. If you have trouble doing this, select an
individual item within the container and choose Select Container from
its shortcut menu.
 With the layout container selected, choose Distribute Evenly from its
shortcut menu as shown in fig 5.15.
 Items that are already within the layout container arrange themselves
evenly; any items you add will do the same.

Fig 5.15 Format Container

94 Introduction to Data Visualization Tools

5.3.4 Tile or float dashboard items

There are two types of layout supported for each object placed in
layout contai- ner such as Tiled and floating layouts. In Tiled layout Tiled
items don’t overlap; they become part of a single-layer grid that resizes
based on the overall dashboard size. In Floating layout floating items can be
layered over other objects. In the example below, a map floats over tiled
views is shown in fig 5.16.

Fig 5.16 Tiled or floating layout

Float or tile a new item

 Under Objects in the Dashboard pane, click the layout option which is
to be used Floating or Tiled as given in fig 5.17. Drag the view or
object onto the dashboard on the right.

Fig 5.17 Selecting layout

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Align items with a grid

To present a visually consistent design, arrange and size dashboard
items over a grid as in fig 5.18.

Fig 5.18 Grid option in Dashboard

 Choose Dashboard > Show Grid.
 To change the grid size, choose Dashboard > Grid Options.

4. A C T I O N S I N D A S H B OA R D
Actions often have unique behavior when the source or destination is a
dashbo- ard. Because a dashboard can contain multiple views, a single
filter or highlight action can have broad impact. Dashboards can also
contain web page objects, which can be targeted with interactive URL
actions.
Definition: A dashboard action is an interactive element on a dashboard
that is driven from the data within that dashboard.
There are three types of dashboard actions:
 Highlight matching marks on one or more sheets in the tableau
dashboard.
 Filter one or more sheets on the dashboard based on a chosen mark,
or navigate to another sheet or dashboard in the workbook.
 URL Navigate to a web page. Optionally, pass selected information from
the wor- ksheet to the URL to personalize it.
Furthermore, there are three ways that the viewer can initiate a dashboard
action:
 Hover: simply hover the mouse over a mark.
 Select: Click on a mark.
 Menu: Choose the option from the tooltip or right-click context menu.

Highlight Action:
To create a highlight action:
 Select dashboard in tableau | Actions from the drop-down menus.
 The Actions dialog box will appear as given in fig 5.19.
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6 Tools
 Click the Add Action button and choose Highlight from the pop-up
menu. From the Edit Highlight Action dialog box, select the method of
initiating the action (hover, select, or menu).
 In the Source Sheets section of the dialog box, choose one or more
worksheets where the desired action to occur on. In the Target Sheets
section, choose one or more worksheets that is to be highlighted
based on the selected mark in the source sheet or sheets. There
should be a common dimension in source and target sheets, or
highlighting won’t have the desired effect.

Fig 5.19 Action dialog box in Dashboard

Dashboard Filters:
 Tableau Dashboard Filters actions can be created directly from a
worksheet’s context menu, or from the Dashboard | Actions dialog
box. Decide which sheet to act as the filter source.
 Select the context menu in the title bar (or right-click on the desired
sheet in Lay- out) and check Uses Filter from the context menu.
 Thereafter, when the user click on any mark in the source sheet, all
other sheets on the dashboard will be filtered to only show values
matching what is clicked on the source sheet.
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 Choose the same context menu and uncheck Use As Tableau

dashboard Filters to turn this option off.
 When we use the context menu option, a “generated” filter action will
appear in the Dashboard | Actions dialog box.

URL Action:
 A URL action allows a web page to be launched from the dashboard.
Further- more, any field in use on the source worksheet can be used
to customize the URL. This permits Tableau to display custom web
pages from the Internet or to integrate with other web-based
systems in the organization as given in fig 5.20.

Fig 5.20 URL Action dialog box in Dashboard

5. S H A R I N G REPORTS
In all data visualization tools, the generated report can be shared with
others through email, webpage, social media, pdf file. In this section, the
steps to be followed in Google data studio to share the report are given.
 Sign in to Dashboard Studio.
 View or edit the report that is to be shared.
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8 Tools

 In top the right, click Share. Different options to share the report
will appear as given in fig 5.21. The Share with others dialog appears.

Fig 5.21 Sharing reports

1. Share with specific users and groups

 Open the Share with others dialog.
 Under Add people, enter the names or email addresses of the people
with whom the report to be shared
 Select the access permission for the people
1. Can edit: Users can edit the report and share it with others.
2. Can view: Users can see the report and share it with others, but
can’t edit it.
 To set different permissions for different people, click Manage access.
 By default, invited people will receive an email with a link to the
report that is shared
 Click Send.
Only people with gmail account can see or edit the report. Non-goole
account people have to create gmail account to see the shared report.
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2. Sharing the link of report

To get a shareable link of the report in Google Data Studio,
 Open the Share with others dialog.
 Click get report link
 Link will appear and send that link to the people with whom the
report to be shared.

3. Embedding report
The generated report can be embedded in any website or app that
supports the HTML iframe tag. The iframe code includes a link to the report,
and is automatically generated by Data Studio. No knowledge of HTML is
required. If the report is shared publicly, then anyone viewing that page can
see the embedded report. If the report is shared with specific users, groups,
or domains, then only those people can see the embedded report. These
viewers must be logged into a Google account. Embedded reports appear in
view mode. Embedded reports are functional and interactive: filters and
date range controls work as normal. However, users can’t edit, copy, or
share the report. Embedded report always contains the Google Data Studio
watermark and full- screen option.

4. Download the report

The report can be downloaded in PDF format and shared with people
using the following steps,
 View or edit the report that is to be downloaded.
 Apply any refinements available in the report, such as filter controls,
date range controls, or data controls.
 In the upper right, click Share, after click Download. .
 Configure the download options such as for multi-page reports, all
pages in the report, or selected pages can be downloaded. Rearrange
the report pages in the PDF output
 Click DOWNLOAD, PDF file will be saved into downloads folder.

Summary
This chapter discussed the uses of Dashboard in data visualization
as well as sharing reports with other stakeholders.
100 Introduction to Data Visualization Tools

R E V IE W Q U E S T I O N S
1. What is dashboard? Explain the uses of dashboard.
2. Write a note on key metrics for dashboard?
3. How to Creating a Dashboard using Google Data Studio?
4. What are the various objects involved in dashboard?
5. List out the uses of navigation and edit button.
6. Classify the different types of dashboards and explain it
7. Demonstrate the basic use cases for dashboard actions.
8. What are the steps to be followed in Google data studio to share the
reports?
9. Write a note on a) Formatting a dashboard b) Actions in Dashboard.
10. How to download a report in PDF format?