Why won't my table headers show? Why are they concatenating? - Quick Tableau Tip!

While with a client, my colleague Jules and I had the same issue on the same day. Puzzled, we reached out to the wider Information Lab team and learnt something completely new! I'll explain below.

The issue was this; 

Basically, if you have 7 dimensions on the 'rows' shelf, the first two get concatenated, or disappear. But when you taken off the last one and make it six, it reappears. 

Was this a bug or by design? 

Tableau rockstars to the rescue!

André was the first to respond, knocking it out of the park with the solution. Check out the .gif below.

Chris Love also chipped in to inform us that if you're looking to include 16 or more columns, then the .xml is a great place to go.

Pretty cool, huh! It is if, like Jules and I, you weren't aware of this. Of course, this is probably a Google-able issue, and one that is easy to find online.

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Fast start or frustration; England vs. Iceland preview

I maintain this; that this team that Hodgson has been putting out, and the system being deployed is the best I've seen in in my life as an England fan. It's just good to watch - it has balance, players who have a good amount of quantity - Arguably no sexy individuals who you throw on to *be* the game, but I do feel that there are some class players in the setup; Daniel Sturridge, who on form is the best English striker; Eric Dier, a player in which England may have finally found their deep-lying pivot; Danny Rose, a strong left sided defender who may be the answer to finally replace Ashley Cole - And on the right, there's a battle between Nathaniel Clyne and Kyle Walker. Couple that with the different variations possible with players like Lallana, Alli, Henderson, Rooney, Kane, Vardy and Sterling... Good problems.

So tonight England play Iceland - The fairytale team. How many times have you heard about the size of their population, the feel-good nature of their team and who can forget that commentator when they scored in the last minute? As the kids say, "Scenes."

But England are going HATE playing against them.

Deep lying defences

In the group stages, England have been unfortunate to play three teams who were a) happy to not have the ball, and for one reason or another b) happy to sit deep and let England attack them. This is not good news, particularly for a country where fans and media are disgusted by wages, perennially  pessimistic and fans sit in pubs slapping the table yelling "Just do something!", "How hard can it be?!", "My nan coulda scored that!" while shaking their head, moments before someone amongst their group wisely notes "This team is crying for a plan B - where's Andy f*ckin Carroll?!" (I'm looking at you Glenn Hoddle)

The hardest part of this is the penetration - Against Russia, there were 4 defenders PLUS the two sitting midfielders, with the centre-backs barely venturing a few yards away from the 18 yard box they were defending. (Passing networks via @11Tegen11)



Against Wales, the 5-2-2-1/5-3-1-1/3-4-2-1 thing that they play was difficult to break down due to Allen and Ledley dropping to the edge of the 18 yard box to protect Williams, Chester and Davies (the three centrebacks) meaning that the 'good' positions to score (central, around the penalty area) were congested as hell. Moreover, the full-backs were happy to be pinned back to stop the cross - and despite this, England still created some chances, some half chances. Mega deep.



Against Slovakia, England faced a team who didn't really want to play - with a back four who sat deep again, with Slovakia content to play in triangles on both flanks.



In all three of these games, England pressed high, with good ball recoveries in these areas and the players linked up well - But the pass they were looking for in the channels and on the inside space between the 18-yard box/6-yard box was an area which they weren't able to exploit.

And this struggle is why I'm concerned about how England will fare if they don't get a fast start.

Let's take a few things into account;

Iceland haven't exactly been dominant in the games they've played in. They've had under 40% of the touches in the games they've played in - with the highest being 487 touches vs Austria (846) at 36.5% of the touches in the game. Further, they don't exactly shoot much - against Austria they took 11 shots - compare that to 4 against Portugal and 8 against Hungary. Sure, you can argue that they're getting more and more comfortable on the ball, and working it into areas where they can take a shot - But more importantly the trend here is tonight is going to be more of the same in this tournament for England... A well drilled formation who will be hard to break down, and will be happy to not have the ball and break when they can.



Conversion rates is something that England have to be wary of - Having not been able to finish their dinner vs Russia and Slovakia, and using all 5 strikers against Wales, it's not been a shining performances for a team who have often been mentioned with respect to the 'quality' and 'options' they have in this area.

Iceland have been the opposite - a conversion rate of 25% vs Portugal, 12% against Hungary and 18% against Austria - You can infer that when they get their chances, they take them. Cahill, Smalling and Dier will have to be alert - And more so will Joe Hart, who has looked a bit shaky on crosses this season. (I am definitely not a goalkeeping expert, so I'll skim over this part)

Formations

Iceland seem to play a flat 4-4-2, and what's worse, is they play direct football - Truly the Leicester's of this European Championships! Their 'star man' Gylfi Sigurdsson has been occupying a deeper role as a central midfielder, but in reality he has been all action - from the way they seem to play you can see that the 'route one' option is for the goalkeeper to go long and hit their big man - Kolbeinn Sigthorsson, with last minute hero Jon Dadi Bodvarsson the man who's the highest up. The team as a whole seem to enjoy be successful at contesting long balls, with the 2nd highest success rate of aerial duels, second only to (surprisingly?) France.







The right hand side seems to link  up often too, with Gunnarson being the link between the midfield and defense. However, though the right hand channel seems to be favoured against Portugal, it doesn't seem the case in the games against Hungary and Austria. In terms of shooting potential, it seems to be largely Sigurdsson and Bodivarsson taking their shots, and the pass accuracy is a 60.9% - The lowest in the tournament. (average positions below)



Teams, Teams, Teams.

England will be content to have the ball, but I feel that England will need someone like Raheem Sterling and Danny Rose on the left, with the Clyne-Lallana link on the right which looked very good against Slovakia. The question comes to midfield; Rooney will inevitably start (he's been calm, assured & gives a scoring option) (God, I sound like a United fan) (But he's not _completely_ awful, and still has ), but who alongside him? This all depends on who's up front.. If Sturridge continues then Henderson should surely get the nod. Secondly, starting Henderson or even Milner gives a) legs in midfield (to support Dier on the inevitable long ball counter attacks) but also the 'Liverpool' flank on the right. These club relationships will be vital in the coming rounds, I think; and b) that Dele Alli is a great option off the bench - Whilst, lets be honest, bringing on Henderson or Milner is hardly a substitution which strikes fear in the opposition hearts, and will rarely excite any crowd at Anfield, let alone at the Euros.

I envisage Roy's team may bring in one of Milner and Henderson to sit with Rooney and Dier, Sterling will return on the left and Clyne will take Walker's spot. With Lallana and Milner playing, there's (again) potential for England to change formations from 4-1-2-3 to 4-1-2-1-2 or even 4-2-3-1 - However, I given the doubts about Lallana's fitness, I wouldn't be surprised to see a front three of Kane, Sturridge and Sterling - With Sterling offering the option to play as a #10.

And this is what I like about this England team - There's a dynamism that hasn't existed before. And as long as they can get a fast start to get Iceland to come at them, I envisage a good game for England. My only concern remains Hodgson's game and player management - As to who comes on for who and when... Especially if England are being frustrated again up till the 60th minute mark.

Conclusions

On paper, this should be a very routine win - The Icelandic players will be hungry, and excited but will be told to play their disciplined compact game and play to their strengths. Key for England is to be dynamic through the game, change systems and re-capture the fantastic movement we have seen by them in glimpses in this tournament. And for me, getting an early (0-25 minutes) goal is *vital*. It means Iceland have to come out and meet England, England can drop into a passing rhythm - But protecting the lead means discipline, which is where the experience of Cahill and the quality of Dier hopefully will shine through. England should be hungry - They've had two extra days off because they didn't top the group, to rest, prepare, train and develop. As @unfitforpurpose mentioned on Twitter - the bizarre thing is, the players seem calm and aware of their skills, whilst it's the fans and media who are whipping up a frenzy.

As I've bleated on throughout, this could be the tournament where England actually manage the tournament, than trying to  get off to a fast start - the momentum is definitely building.

Now is the time to make it count.

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England vs. Russia | It wasn't that bad..

This is possibly the best England team I've seen.* *I emphasise the word team here. Lots of caveats to this statement such as 'in parts', 'team performance', 'cohesion', 'understanding' etc. It's a sensationalist statement to draw you in. I think. I hope.

The first major England tournament I remember is World Cup 2002. The final was on my birthday, and England were knocked out by Ronaldinho looping it over Seaman. I still don't think he meant it. I've gotten excited by the prospect, but I don't recall seeing England play this well at a finals. Perhaps I appreciate the game more. Perhaps, as one passionate tweeter suggested yesterday, I'm blind. But I actually believe this.

England kicked off their campaign yesterday with what I would call an 'encouraging draw'. Pundits, however, would probably call it 'a draw which feels more like a loss'. In my eyes, England have been slammed in the past for not understanding tournament football - and that's where the small irk about potentially poor game management vs. Russia comes in. However, that said, a slow start is never a bad thing. Tournament football in it's nature is a game-by-game thing. It really depends on how the lessons from Marseille are learned, built upon and improved.

Let's start with something great; I loved this move by England; the movement and fluidity between the players in white is great, and (admittedly helped by poor Russian positioning), the right hand side was very fruitful.

This is so quality from England. Vertical pass to switch to an advanced wide area, then a third-man run combination. pic.twitter.com/qVmrG1uwx5

— István Beregi (@szteveo) June 12, 2016

The full-backs were fantastic

In the first half - England were really, really good. I almost typed sensational, but I was lambasted on Twitter for enjoying England's overall performance last night, so I'll keep the tone lower. The fact was, they pressed well, the full-backs - across the entire game for me - were sensational going forward. In Kyle Walker, we're finally seeing a player with the pace, power and dribbling nous to get ahead on the over- and under-lap to cut back for one of the central players to shoot. The pass to Rooney was one of a few times I can remember a full-back for England getting past his man, and asking questions of the masses of Russians in the middle of the box. And then we have Danny Rose - The drill across the 6-yard box was begging for Kane or Alli to surge past any man who stood in their way to nick something onto it.

Credits for David Sumpter of Soccermatics - Check out his book!

As you can see above in the graphic by David Sumpter, the passing frequency between Rose, Dier and Rooney is immediately striking, as is the average position of Walker - he was such a pivotal outlet on the right hand side.

Can't win games unless you finish your dinner

The Wales game earlier in the day highlighted that the most scrappy goals can be the most important - And for all their dominance and wonderful display, England could not find that level of scrappy-ness in the first half to force the Russians out of their shell. Look at this average position map - Russia effectively had 6 across the back line 3 or 4 times in the first half, with the full backs really pinning the wide men back. My favourite part was the trust Walker and Rose had in Dier, Smalling and Cahill to be alert to any counter attack. The role of Dier, as highlighted below, cannot be forgotten.



I'd let Eric Dier protect me and my family

Admittedly, that's a bit far and quite superlative, but my point is thus. The role that Dier played last night was immense. Apart from the outrageous free-kick he struck with absolute beauty, he had a dominant performance. Playing the role of passing recycler, he finished the game with 81 touches of which were 68 passes and a passing accuracy of 89.7% (61/68 completed)

And hey. While we're on the subject, lets talk about the passing ability of that England line-up. An average passing accuracy of 82.9% - And that's excluding Hart (60.7%). A long way from "conservative" "long ball Woy" I have heard in the past.

Did Rooney tire after 50 or so minutes?

The decision to substitute Rooney was blasted after the result. "Why sub the captain" people cried (of course, these same people wanted Rooney no where near the starting eleven before the game kicked off) "He's been terrific tonight" they cried. But was there something missing from the latter end of his performance? Let's have a look at his touchmaps. I've spit it into 20 minute chunks.



 So perhaps there isn't *really* anything to be said about that apart from the eye test. After having a look at this, I got to thinking. How did the 'touches' that each team took change at each stage? From the narratives, England bossed the first half, had a poor start to the second, a solid middle, and a bad end. Does that story follow?



Yeah - It seems like the goal was coming. Russia took it upon themselves to dominate the game, whilst the in the first half an hour, looked to take the game to Russia. It's just a shame that pure clear cut chances weren't created.

A slice more of context? Why not.



You can actually see the blue dots (Russia) growing more dominant, especially down their right, England's left. Something to be wary of, perhaps. But that first 0-15 minutes. Wow. England actually dominated.

Game management - What to do to 'see it out'?

Much was made of Roy Hodgson's substitutions. Many didn't rate Kane, Raheem or Lallana in the second half (perhaps they have a point, perhaps not) and admittedly, it might have made sense to bring on J*mie V*rdy to run at the centre-backs of Russia. Who, actually, I thought had a very good game. Both of them knew their strengths and weaknesses, and were rarely drawn out of position by the England attack (apart from perhaps *that* Rooney chance which Akinfeev saved magnificently). I felt like they used every single year of their experience to their benefit to keep England out of the 6 yard box. Which worked really well (see Michael Caley's ExG map below; larger dots, clearer cut chances, the rough sum being rough sum of the probability of goals England coulda shoulda woulda scored from the shots they took etc)



Back to substitions, the name James Milner screams calm, effective, conservative play, and perhaps he should have replaced Raheem Sterling earlier - Or even Rooney, if it was inevitable that Rooney was coming off. The fact that Rose likes to marauder forward to great effect means having someone like Milner who runs tirelessly all game can help the foil - But you lose the direct running of Sterling (though, his ability to pass early, or shoot at the right time will be one of the first things that Pep sorts out. I hope!)

Conclusions, and Wales.

The best part for me is that England could have been carried away by one brilliant game had they won comprehensively. This allows the squad to experience and learn from their mistakes. No doubt the backroom team will have each player assess their own performance and I am almost certain that we will see a very different England. Because of poor performance? Because of the frailties we saw?

No. I feel like Roy actually has been smart about this and will change the team and system depending on the opposition he is facing. Analysts must have watched footage and understood how Wales and Slovakia play. The Welsh game is fascinating for two reasons; first, to see how each team reacts; and second, because of the 5-3-1-1/3-4-2-1 formation thing that Coleman has them playing. The flanks and middle will be overloaded, and Wales will also look to sit and hit on the counter. The amount of long balls that Wales hit (84) is the highest of the tournament so far (not including the games today [Sunday 12th])

So, yeah. I felt OK after last night. Nothing from the chances England had screamed WE WOZ ROBBED to me, and I can understand that the goal was unlucky. However, 1 point is better than 0, and I honestly believe that this young squad played some scintillating football last night in periods - Just were lacking that final spark.

My message to the wonderful folk who have got to the bottom of this? Keep your Spurs & Leicester biases at home, take these 23 players at their merit and enjoy the spectacle. There's some great football to be watched if you stop tutting when England fail to cross into the box early. Watch the movement, the direction of play & the cohesion + players understanding each other shone through across the team. Last night was a good start, and there's so much to improve, I feel genuinely excited.

Finally, England actually played well in a game at a tournament - I can't wait to see what's next.

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Consistent. Clear. Engaging - Data Visualisations Style guide; an Introduction

For almost every single company, branding is super important. 

Of the below, how many can you recognise, just from the colour scheme, font, logo or layout?

(For reference, Apple, Ralph Lauren, McDonalds, PlayStation)
These are some of the most marketable brands, and they rely on small visual cues, colours and associations within our (the consumer's) mind to ensure that we think and recognise their individual brand. For instance, if the M was a different font, would you recognise it? If the poignant buttons on the PlayStation controller weren't coloured, how much longer would it take to know that it's an advert for the console?

What does this mean?

In many large organisations today, there are countless training sessions, internal documentation and, given we're now in an age of information tech, a whole host of plugins.
The idea for this blog series came when I was with a client, and noted that they had countless templates, shortcuts and 'best practices' when it came to presentation design - that is, in MS PowerPoint.

Given a lot of the employees at this firm consistently churn out slide deck after slide deck, as I had during my placement year, the notion that this sort of practice is almost exclusive to the Microsoft Office stack struck me. What's also interesting, is that if you do want some level of branding or best practice, the "common" way of doing so would be to either design a bespoke application for your colleagues to use - which means yet MORE training, another IT tool to add to the existing array etc.

In this vein, one of my tasks at this client was to help to develop best practices & help develop something which represented their corporate brand - on the same level their PowerPoint style guide was doing.

The Objective

In this blog series, I will look to explore and outline some steps to consider and take when thinking of & creating a corporate style guide for data visualisation. A lot of the examples I will talk through and show will be based on Tableau, but there's no reason why best practice and ideas cannot be a cross-platform process.

The plan is to cover;

- Chart & Visualisation types

- Colour

- Iconography

- Typography

- Layouts & Templates

This will cover most parts of the key features in a data visualisation style guide, but it always depends on the structure & branding of your own firm to decide which apply to you.

A good way to look at style guides for visualisation is like a cookbook - by all means, the user of the guide can imitate pixel for pixel, but there is of course creative license. This is why the tone and application of the style guide has to be on point - else, well, you may as well either end up leaving it to rot in the vault of other content, or force it down users' throats... Which will of course lead them to resent any such 'guide' from then on.

So what do I mean by a style guide?

For me, these two charts are instantly recognisable.

For the left hand side chart, the colour scheme, faded background and font indicate that this is a visualisation by the Financial Times.

On the right, the subtle colour, the little red box in the top left and the manner of annotations suggest to me that this is a visual by the Economist.

How do firms encourage such homogenous practice? How can they enforce to their various employees "this is how we design here"?

For meet this kind of objective, a style guide can act as a template. Not as an exhaustive list of showing users how to display, comment on and deliver every single chart - but a way to gently prompt the creative process, whilst keeping the user on brand. This allows a starting point, and speaking as someone who hasn't had a ton of experience as a professional business analyst over the years, I believe this sort of process can help everyone in every part of the business.

Offering design principles not only enforces brand guidelines, but also can prompt users in the direction of best practices. And for those who aren't as confident in design, it can help to do that part of the 'thinking' process for them - with layout, colour, font etc all mentioned in such a document.

One of the first styles guides I came across when researching for this series was this, by the Sunlight Foundation.

This was one of, if not the, best example of a comprehensive, dedicated style guide built to represent data visualisation. Further, it highlights a lot of great best practice when creating this style guide - For instance, I particularly like the fact that there is a small crosstab on this slide/page, as it shows the structure that the data should be in when creating a bar chart. The more comprehensive guide, which can be found here has a lot more good examples for you to check out.

What's Next?

The next, or first, part of this series will focus upon chart and visualisation types - the core of this entire series really. I'll explore how to segment chart types, different ways of guiding the user and why such a practice is so important.

Thanks for reading, any and all feedback is always welcome.

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#FastFriday - Number 2

Welcome to the second in the #FastFriday series.

For context, this is a weekly challenge that Ben Moss, Simona Loffredo and myself will be participating in. The concept is as follows - We have to create a visualisation created from a dataset which we see for the first time  when we connect to Tableau. We're starting with a time limit of SIX (6) minutes to create a visualisation with meaning.

The objective? To learn about interpreting data better. To understand each other's approach when faced with a new data set.

And how well we viz under pressure.

We will screen record and then blog about our experiences.

Make sense? Check out my video below (complete with my mutterings while I build - again)

God. This one was tough! First of all, huge shout out to Chris Love for providing this week's dataset - It's been a hectic week for me, so I've only just been able to finish and post my effort! (the time is 10:44pm)

TIME: 6m 5s

Beginnings

Once more, the first thing I did was scroll across the data - this is a university data set, showing the rankings worldwide across different metrics. Given the time limit, I was already semi-panicking! I thought about measure names and measure values, as Ben and Simo did last week - my intentions were to create something simple and spend more time on dashboard design... Woops!

Looking at the number of universities gave me an idea of the amount of detail (as each row was one uni) but also adding in the year (changing it to a dimension first) - Then the heatmap was good to spot how the data was structured... Were all the universities always in the top 100? Were there others who didn't make it?

In my head, I was thinking of what I was going to do. A bump chart, a Top N filter, a slope chart with a highlight parameter... All crossed my mind. But I thought ranking was boring, so ended up using a map - cos maps are cool.

What shall I do now?

Given there was no geographical hierarchy, I thought I'd actually create one myself - using Groups. This was what really slowed me down.. The groups were (as I then realised) assigned by the data - in this case the raw latitude and longitudes. This meant that I couldn't simply intuitively add outliers into a group (as I found with the University of Sussex, which was a Null) - After grouping, renaming and being happy, I had not much time left to create something using these groups.

So I went to my trusted small multiple scatter! I mapped each region by year, and looked at how the teaching scores and research scores a) correlated and b) how they'd changed. This was quite interesting I thought, and the viz itself didn't look awful.

Thoughts
I did end up spending the last minute or two lamenting my approach to groups, while absentmindedly adding a title and doing some formatting things. 

I attribute this slowness to a semi-frustrating end of the week, as well as the time being half past 10 at night etc etc, excuses excuses. I really enjoy this project, the panic is real - especially when you're running against the clock. It makes me think how much I love the iterative process of Tableau - but in order to work efficiently AND effectively, I think this exercise is a fantastic way of working toward that end.

Check out Ben & Simo's efforts here:

Ben Moss: https://benjnmoss.wordpress.com/2016/06/03/fastfriday-6-minute-vizzes-episode-2/

Simona Loffredo: https://thevizconnoisseur.wordpress.com/2016/06/03/fastfriday-6-minute-vizzes-2nd-episode/

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#FastFriday - Number 1

Welcome to the first in the #FastFriday series.

For context, this is a weekly challenge that Ben Moss, Simona Loffredo and myself will be participating in. The concept is as follows - We have to create a visualisation created from a dataset which we see for the first time  when we connect to Tableau. We're starting with a time limit of SIX (6) minutes to create a visualisation with meaning.

The objective? To learn about interpreting data better. To understand each other's approach when faced with a new data set.

And how well we viz under pressure.

We will screen record and then blog about our experiences.

Make sense? Check out my video below (complete with my mutterings while I build)

TIME: 6m 21s

The beginning

First of all, I scrolled across the data in the data source window - to get a feel of the type of data, and the width (number of columns). Following that, I went to the sheet and immediately started looking at the measures and dimensions, using Number of records to better understand the dataset.

I think this worked a bit as I understood that the row level was at 'Data Zone' level, and then I saw the hierarchy. When working with data longer term, I think this sort of exploratory analysis is really important - And further, that knowing the relationships within the data help you to understand if there's any more data prep/cleaning/ETL (extract, transform, load) to be done.

You can see that I couldn't see the hierarchy at all with number of records so dragged it off and went to a more tabular view by pivoting.

The Middle

Wow. So many measures! With wide field names, and given my jittery state, it took me a while to comprehend what measures were there, and what I could show with this data (as you can hear) - I settled on population, created a bar chart with the label inside the bar (which admittedly, ate a bit of time) and then left it. This entire process, took about half the time. So a bit of panic began to set in...

Processing the field names was interesting, because in the time-pressured state, you have to really be careful what you're building, and how the story will layout. The scattergun approach to data-viz where you conceptulise then create all gets jumbled into one slick process. I say slick. I mean more like Kermit the Frog running around on stage with his arms in the air.

The Dilemma

The scatter plot was my plan when I decided to use the bar as a filter - this would mean that it would be exploratory but with some takeaways with the original view (I hoped!)

I started messing around with some measures, eventually deciding i should actually read the measure names rather than mindlessly dragging and dropping.

I'm not sure exactly what I was trying to show with the scatter plot, with income deprived folk on the x-axis and education level on the Y, but there was a trend and i thought it would be interesting to see clusters by the local authority (or something to that effect)

Messing around with colours and trend lines ate a bit of time, but i thought I'd at at least a bit of colour here..

The biggest mistake? Thinking I had enough time to add summary cards. If I had a clear idea of how this would play out and how I'd do this (order of dragging and speedy formatting) I would have probably done it for sure. But in this case, I didn't - so it just ate into time I could have spent on the dashboard, or for tweaking the other visualisations. Summary cards look cool, but with the time constraints it was perhaps not the best use of my time.

Always learning...

The Grand Finale

I love the speed that you can do things in Tableau - no less that I can create my dashboard in two clicks... Four if you include the fact I brought in my dud sheet! But with a few clicks and a title, I had a semi interesting dashboard (with a bit of a story? Kinda?)

This was intense man. Like, I didn't expect to spend this long working through the dashboard and developing something on the fly. Watching back the part where I fumble around the cards, is interesting as there's a point if I was watching where I think if I was watching someone, I'd feel they wasted time there. So it's a weird feeling, but one which I thoroughly enjoyed. 

Then - the most rewarding part? Watching Simona and Ben's entries. All three of us approach data in such different ways, it's fascinating! The fact that Ben immediately planned his dashboard, and that Simona took the gamble of a) using a calculated field and b) ACTUALLY NAMING IT was so rogue. Interestingly, they both used measure names/values - which was an 'ahhhhhh, I totally should have done that' moment for me.

Check out their efforts here:

Ben Moss: http://benjnmoss.wordpress.com/2016/05/27/fastfriday-6-minute-vizzes-1/

Simona Loffredo: http://thevizconnoisseur.wordpress.com/2016/05/27/fastfriday-series-first-episode/

Want to get involved? Here's a fresh dataset for you to try!

Remember - Time yourself for 6 minutes AND no peeking beforehand! (click here)

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Google Data Studio - First thoughts

As you all are aware, in the last year I've spent almost every single day using Tableau. However, I've done my best to try out other data visualisation tools. In the past, I've reviewed QlikSense and Power BI - So of course, when I found out that Google had released their own data visualisation tool, I had to check it out.

The Lowdown

The software is called 'Google Data Studio' (https://datastudio.google.com/#/navigation/reporting) and it is currently still in beta.

The paid version (Data Studio 360) is/will be a part of Google Analytics 360 Suite - Which also includes

• Analytics 360
• Tag Manager 360
• Optimize 360 (also in beta)
• Attribution 360
• Audience Centre (also in beta)

Check out the full range here (https://www.google.co.uk/analytics/360-suite/#?modal_active=none) - Of course, being Google, this lends itself to the 'wider' Google stack; following the 'one login, full integration' sort of model. In order to purchase the Analytics 360 Suite (or, I'd imagine you have to buy the whole package) you have to either contact Google, or one of Google's partner resellers.

BUT! A couple of days ago, Google announced a free version of Data Studio, aimed at individuals and smaller teams. The limitations? You can only create 5 reports (360 allows unlimited) & you can primarily connect to Google Sheets, BigQuery, AdWords, Google Analytics, YouTube and Attribution 360. Though it's currently focussed on the Google 'range', there is talk that SQL database connectors will be rolled out.

Data Studio's goal is to 'help you accomplish the three primary tasks you need to create beautiful reports that tell beautiful stories with your data'

Connect. Visualise. Share.

So very Google!

So, one of the immediate main drawbacks for me (as I write this on the train) is that the product does not work offline - Which makes sense to an extent; Google Docs etc are all browser based, as is the Chromebook. So it's not an uncommon thing to see. I'd imagine that the paid version *does* have an offline mode, but of course I hope so anyway (I don't know this as a fact)

Pre-demo thoughts

Instead of testing the tool (which I will do later), let me talk about first thoughts in this post. Watching the 'demo' video was slick. As it is Google, there's a well narrated video with beautiful visuals and a nice UX... Which made me feel a bit concerned as a huge Tableau practitioner!

Connecting to data looks simple enough, but as I mentioned before, I seems to be very Google specific (for now) - Which isn't an issue really, as most data can be in Excel formats etc.

The interface itself is very similar to what people who have extensively used Google Products online, the sort've format of Google Docs/Slides/Sheets etc. And of course, Google champion themselves for the simultaneous collaboration - which is possible within this tool (though you're able to set permissions) - Check out the image (taken from the Google Data Studio website, but annotated by me)

This is the sort've 'opening view' of Data Studio in such a Google way and then once you'd opened the datasource, the building window looks a bit like this

When I saw this, I thought two things; one, that the interface is very similar to QlikSense (config pane on the right, chart controls on the top) but second; green things, blue things. This refers back to the post written by Tom Brown years ago which I always recommend to people starting with Tableau to understand continuous vs discrete - and Google have done something very similar with the 'Pills' that the user can bring in.

So this is a really basic overview and first thoughts, from reading documentation, watching the video and seeing how the interface looks without actually playing with it.

Conclusions - For now

Moving forward, I'm going to try and have a proper play than this very basic overview - but my initial thoughts are fairly positive. It may not have the deeper analysis tools which Tableau has, including the level of customisability - but for firms/individuals who are doing very basic reporting, this doesn't seem a bad place to start.

To find out more, check out https://www.google.co.uk/analytics/360-suite/data-studio/ for more on this.

To try it out (and certainly where I'm going to start) check out - https://datastudio.google.com/#/reporting/0B_U5RNpwhcE6R3d5Nk5zOE5ZSGM

Unfortunately, at the time of writing Google Data Studio isn't available in the UK. I'll dig a bit deeper into the product once it is available here.

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Creating a Soundwave Chart in Tableau

EDIT: This post was previously named "How to make the histogram which looks like a audio wave thing (in Tableau!)" - But that seemed a bit naff. So I updated the title.
And added a viz at the bottom!

I use sports data a lot - I understand it intuitively and always have more questions I want to ask of it and find out more. So you could say I think about it fairly frequently, even if it's a subconscious thing.

Such an event occured this morning as I was walking to work from Liverpool Street station. One of the visualisations I'd created yesterday took two different line charts and filled the space in between. It was a crude solution, but it worked and it got me thinking... Remember the shot worm (see below)? Could I recreate something like that in Tableau?

This is from Peter Beshai's awesome interactive dashboard 'Buckets'

Luckily, I had a basketball dataset to hand, as one of the Makeover Monday (run by Andy Kriebel and Andy Cotgreave) challenges were on Steph Curry and his ridiculous streak.

Long story short, I did a mini-makeover of my own effort, and ended up with the below.

NB; it's very crude, I didn't update the headers or annotations or anything.. I even moved Steph across in Paint.


How was this done? Check out the short video below.

UPDATE (31/05): I actually created a visualisation which uses this technique to show how the chart could be used with NBA Statistics. Check it out below.

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13th of May '15 | One of the best days of my life

Some things never change

Let's wind the clock back a year.

I am on a train back from London (of course), travelling through the beautiful country side, hurtling back to the South-West, to Plymouth where I studied my undergraduate degree. There's a copy of "Environmental and Resource Economics" by Tom Tietenberg and Lynne Lewis open in front of me, but I'm not paying it much attention.

The 13th of May 2015 was perhaps one of the best days of my life so far. And a lot of it I think has to do with luck and opportunity.

Setting the scene

I studied Economics for four years and took a sandwich year in between where I worked between my second and third year - this is when I fell in love with the idea of working with data and presenting it back with added analysis. 

I decided I wanted to work in data visualisation toward the end of 2014, and when I read Neil Charles' post on 'How to do football analysis in Tableau' in Febuary 2015, I think that changed everything.

It was through NeilCharles and Steve Fenn I became interested in Tableau, but one opportune tweetwhich I read on the way home by Chris Love (who I followed after seeing his amazing Iron Viz entry on the History of the Football League) which was the largest of what I call the bizarre series of events which has lead me to end up where I am.

Yes, a year ago today, I interviewed to work at the Information Lab and be part of the inaugural class of the Data School.

8 hours for 30 minutes - Worth it?

I'm sure you've heard of the process, sending a Tableau Public viz, having a chat with Andy Kriebel for 30 minutes about it and about myself - God, looking back at that visualisation, I can pick SO many holes in it.

Click!

Look at it. An OK effort for the first time I was using Tableau for something other than football data, but so many issues.

• The years are along the y-axis (I honestly have no idea why I did this)
• There's clear red-green colourblindness issues
• The stacked bar is kinda hideous

Stepping back even further, here's the first visualisation I posted on Tableau Public.

Sized automatic. Huge right hand panel. Cool trend line. (Click!)

It's using TransferMarkt data which I scraped using Import.io, but he's a scatter plot - I distinctly remember being impressed that I could actually add annotations and comment boxes. Bless.

The Dilemma

The rub for me was that, after passing the phone interview, the date given to us by Andy was slap bang in the middle of my exams. These were my finals, the four exams I needed to pass to walk out with a credible degree. Tuesday 12th, I had a Game Theory exam. Thursday 14th I had an Environmental Economics exam. And here was my prospective employer, a Zen Master no less, asking me if I can make the Wednesday work (I did ask to have it rescheduled - the answer was "are you sure you can't make it work?")

I gambled. The 4 hours there and 4 hours back was enough time to revise on the train, I could do some reading, check my notes. And hey, if I'm not prepared now, there's no hope right?

The interview process is akin to speed dating - 15 minutes in a competency based interview, 15 minutes presenting my work. Then told "we'll let you know" and poof. I'm wandering down Tottenham Court Road with no idea how the interview had gone.

Meanwhile, back on the train..

And there I was - hurtling through the South-West, mind wandering away from willingness to pay models and carbon tariffs, I receive 3 emails.

The first from my lecturer and personal tutor, who asks how the interview went and informs me of my final coursework grade - 89%! I was dumbfounded - I didn't expect that! 

The second, an automated one - telling me my dissertation is ready for collection - and I was overjoyed with my result of 69.1%

And finally, the pièce de résistance -  A call from Andy offering my a job.
Incredible scenes. My feelings are fairly accurately depicted in the above .gif

Reflections

I cannot imagine a better job right now - I enjoy what I do, I'm driven to continue learning... There was a great moment in our third or fourth week where I stopped, and realised that I was now being paid to do something I was doing in my spare time. Simply amazing.

And the best part?

It is so rewarding to be able to see the progress.

A great example is the visualisation below - I think it's among my favourites I've created (along with a couple of the client projects I've done & the tiled map I created in Tableau 10 last week)

The best bit? The data used here is almost identical to that first scatter plot. I cannot wait to see what else I can learn in another 12 months.

Click!

So, I think the only thing to do is this - Thank you so much to the Information Lab, to Tom, to Andy and to all of my fellow Data Schoolers for being simply fantastic. And last, but never ever least - The Tableau Community. It never ceases to amaze me how supportive, constructive and collaborative this group of software lovers are. It's simply amazing, inspiring & I thank you all.

Let's see what happens between today and the 13th of May 2017!

Watch. This. Space.

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