Clearly and Simply

Author: Robert

  • Another Look at Site Catchment Analysis with Tableau 6 (Part 1)

    Techniques to Get Past the Limitations – Part 1: Table Calculations

    © Ulrich E. K. Schmidt / pixelio.deClearly and Simply proudly presents another guest post: Richard Leeke is kind enough to contribute a series of 3 articles on how to overcome the limitations of my fragmentary and imperfect Site Catchment Analysis with Tableau 6. Richard is a co-founder of Equinox Ltd, a New Zealand based IT consulting firm, where he specializes in performance engineering. And Richard is one of the most active members in the Tableau Forums with an impressive number of almost 1,300 posts so far. A real Tableau expert. Enjoy.

    I read Robert’s excellent Site Catchment Analysis with Tableau 6 post discussing the pluses and minuses of Tableau 6 compared with 5.2 and despite being really pleased with what version 6 has delivered, I could immediately relate to the limitations Robert had encountered.

    I was fortunate enough to be on the Technology Preview programme for the new Tableau Data Engine and the alpha programme for the rest of version 6, so I have had a few months’ head-start on most of the Tableau community in terms of learning how to get the most out of the new version. One of the things that I have come to realize is that there are lots of completely different ways to tackle the same problem, so I couldn’t resist the challenge of seeing if I could get past any of the limits which Robert described. I managed to do so, and along the way learned a lot and also developed a couple of new (to me, at least) techniques which will be invaluable in my own analysis.

    Today’s article describes how to use aggregate table calculations to overcome the limitations of Robert’s site catchment analysis. As always, including the workbook for direct access here on the blog via Tableau Public and for free download. 

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  • Better Chart Tooltips with Microsoft Excel 2010

    Create Tableau lookalike Chart Tooltips on your Microsoft Excel 2007/2010 Charts

    Better Chart Tooltips with Microsoft Excel 2010Let’s call a spade a spade: Microsoft Excel’s chart tooltips are lame.

    When talking about tooltips I refer to textboxes that appear when hovering over a data point of a chart with the mouse.

    Excel’s chart tooltips show by default the name of the data series, the point (e.g. the category) and the values. There is no built-in feature to change anything about them except for turning the tooltips off in Excel’s options.

    However, chart tooltips are a great interactive feature. They give the user the opportunity to easily explore the data and get additional information about selected data points on the chart.

    Have a look at Tableau as a benchmark. Tableau allows you to display any information in the tooltips (i.e. any given dimension or measure), to format them and to replace the field names by whatever you choose. There is even much more. For instance: my highly esteemed Tableau blogging colleague Andy Cotgreave showed on the outstanding blog of the data studio how to add conditional formatting to tooltips and even how to implement pseudo bar charts inside of a tooltip. Fantastic work, Andy.

    Back to Microsoft Excel. Can we do at least something similar in Excel? Let’s stay humble. I am not dreaming of great formatting features or even the fabulous things Andy did with Tableau. I am talking about just some nice and meaningful tooltips displaying more information than the Excel default does. Is this possible?

    Yes, it is.

    Today’s post shows how to improve Microsoft Excel’s chart tooltips using a textbox and some VBA. As always, providing the Excel 2007/2010 workbook for free download. 

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  • The History of FIFA World Cup Host Elections

    FIFA World Cup Host Elections since 1930 – the applicants, the winners and some additional statistics visualized using Tableau Software

    © Rainer Sturm / pixelio.de

    Most of the Tableau related articles here on Clearly and Simply include how-to-tutorials or workarounds. Today’s post is different.

    In the light of recent events, today’s article will be straitened to a very simple, yet hopefully interesting visualization: The FIFA World Cup Host Elections over the course of time. The applicants, the withdrawals, the winners and additional interesting statistics of the football associations in the applying countries, like the number of players, the number of clubs and the officials.

    As always including the visualizations for direct access using Tableau Public and the option to download the workbook.

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  • Wordle Tag Clouds in Microsoft Excel

    Create dynamic Tag Clouds in Microsoft Excel using advanced Wordle

    10k Comments Excel DashboardOne week back, my friend and Excel MVP Chandoo published a post to celebrate the very impressive milestone of the 10,000th comment on his blog: 10k Comments Excel Dashboard. Who dared to think he would do this without providing a dashboard? Of course he did.

    Chandoo provided a very nice dashboard showing all kinds of analysis and visualization of the comments received on his blog so far. By the way: Kudos on the marvelous success of your blog, Chandoo!

    Great layout and very interesting insights on an at a glance dashboard. Chandoo also included a tag cloud showing “what do they say”. He obviously created the cloud using Wordle, but he inserted it as a static image.

    This made me think. Is it possible to create tag clouds in Excel dynamically?  Yes it is.

    Today’s post shows a way how to include Wordle tag clouds into your Excel workbook, dynamically based on texts in any cell ranges. As always, the article includes the Excel example workbook for free download.

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  • Site Catchment Analysis with Tableau 6

    Use Parameters and Table Calculations in Tableau 6 for a Site Catchment Analysis of Germany

    © R.-B. / pixelio.deFor a recent post called Calculated Fields in Tableau I used a site catchment analysis of Germany to explain how to use and take advantage of Calculated Fields in Tableau. The example posted back then was produced with Tableau 5.2.

    The main disadvantage of that workbook is the fact that you have to change a constant in a Calculated Field if you want to switch to another center location for the site analysis. Inconvenient and even impossible if you only have the Tableau Reader available.

    With version 6, available since November 10, 2010, Tableau introduced an extremely powerful new feature: Parameters. Parameters are user-defined constants that can be used in Calculated Fields. They can be entered by the user of the workbook either on worksheets or dashboards, are valid throughout the whole workbook (e.g. they are global) and can be used in any Calculated Field. Thus, it wasn’t far to seek that with parameters Tableau 6 would easily overcome the main drawback of the Tableau 5 site analysis workbook.

    Today’s post shows how to transform the site analysis workbook to Tableau 6 using parameters. As usual including the Tableau Public workbook for direct access and free download.

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