2020 Week 25: Can you add and remove items from a set?

2020 Week 25: Can you add and remove items from a set?

Lorna’s challenge this week is all about the new set actions available in 2020.2 and was inspired by the training that Bethany recently gave on this topic. Fortunately, I attended this training, so I’m hoping not to have too many problems. The key ability that has been added is being able to individually add or remove members from a set. Think of the old school yard scenario of two “captains” picking members in turn for their teams. Here there are…

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WOW2020 Week 24

WOW2020 Week 24

Can you compare a 3-day vs. 14-day moving average and describe the latest trend? Ann’s challenge this week is based on COVID-19 data and is an exercise in table calculations. Excellent! I feel I’m slowly getting to grips with these, so I’m intrigued to see how I get on. The core challenge is to calculate 3-day and 14 day moving averages and to compare them. Ann’s challenge on Workout WednesdayThe official solution by Jami Delagrange on Tableau Public My solution:…

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Creating a rotating 3d cube in Tableau

Creating a rotating 3d cube in Tableau

After all the fun I’ve been having recently with coordinates and polygons, I decided to see if I could take the next step – into the 3rd dimension! (queue dramatic music and crappy 3d glasses). No, I don’t currently see any practical use, but it sounds like fun! In principle, all that we are doing is mapping a 3d object to the 2d x and y coordinates that Tableau handles so well. To keep things as simple as possible, I’m…

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My First Radial Diagram

My First Radial Diagram

After the recent Workout Wednesday polygon exercises, which relied on calculating x and y coordinates, I decided to try my first radial diagram. Can’t be that difficult, right? Actually, it was pretty easy! It just needed a bit of clear thinking about the calculations. Before I get into how it was built, you can see it on Tableau Public and below: Back to school – Trigonometry Full disclosure: I LOVED this stuff at school! And still do. I created the…

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WOW2020 Week 23: Can you excel at bar charts?

WOW2020 Week 23: Can you excel at bar charts?

Bar charts. Or are they? Requirements on the WOW websiteLuke’s solution on Tableau PublicMy solution on Tableau Public This week’s challenge from Luke looks at first blush to be a fool’s errand: why would you want to abuse lovely Tableau to create a chart that looks like an Excel chart? However, I’m sure, as ever, there’s more to this than meets the eye. Below are Luke’s chart and the standard equivalent in Tableau for comparison: Note that the Tableau bars…

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WOW2020 Week 22: Profitability spotlight – is your budget recovered?

WOW2020 Week 22: Profitability spotlight – is your budget recovered?

A challenge involving a new chart type, described as “a bi-dimensional chart (alternative parallel chart)”. Requirements on the WOW websiteIvett Kovács’s solution on Tableau Public My solution: The Journey The first challenge is working out what the chart is supposed to show and how to read it. Certainly not a chart type for the casual user, more something that succinctly shows information to regular users of the dashboard. The solution looks like this: If you understood that straight away, then…

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WOW2020 Week 21: Can you design for an automatic phone layout?

WOW2020 Week 21: Can you design for an automatic phone layout?

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This challenge from Lorna focuses on creating dashboards for use on mobiles. As such, the calculations and worksheets are not complicated. It’s all about the dashboard formatting. Lorna links to a handy article from Bridget Cogley, which gives some tips. I think the main idea here is to build the default dashboard layout in such a way that Tableau’s automatic layout feature converts the dashboard successfully into a mobile format. Lorna set her public solution such that it can only…

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Creating an anonymised version of a workbook

Creating an anonymised version of a workbook

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(Adapted from a post on the Tableau Forums) I’m sure many of you that have had support cases with Tableau have heard the legitimate question “could you send the twbx file so that we can have a look?” You might have also heard it on the forums. Having a workbook to look at makes it MUCH easier for others to help you. However, if the dashboard contains personal data, this can be very difficult. As part of a support case,…

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WOW2020 Week 20: How much do these states contribute to the total?

WOW2020 Week 20: How much do these states contribute to the total?

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First challenge using 2020.2 features! WOW 2020 Week 20, version 2020.2. As Sean said, lots of 2s and 0s. This time it’s all about the new Set Controls feature which allows users to manually select members of a set in a very similar way to the current filter interface. Sean’s Challenge hereAnd his solution on Tableau Public here My Solution: This challenge involves a map of the US where a user can click on a state to add members to…

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Too many subtotals!

Too many subtotals!

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I picked this tip up from a three-second part of Luke Stanke’s build video from his (now legendary?) 10/10 Workout Wednesday 2020 Week 18 Challenge. It was very quick and easy to miss. If you create a table, you have the option under “Analysis” to add ALL Subtotals: The result it subtotals at all levels of your table. Makes sense. But what if you don’t want ALL subtotals, just at certain levels? In this example, if I just want to…

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