drawingwithnumbers.artisart.orgDrawing with Numbers | Thoughts on data visualization and Tableau

Drawing with Numbers Thoughts on data visualization and Tableau Menu Tips and Techniques Tableau v8 – The Kraken Grand Totals and Subtotals Customizing Grand Totals – Part 1 Customizing Grand Totals – Part 2 Customizing Grand Totals – Part 3 Customizing Grand Totals in Tableau v8 – The Stacking Snag Annotating Subtotals Tableau 8.1 Two Pass Totals At the Level Visualizations Tableau Wiki Basics Preparing Data Design Conditional Formatting Dimensions and Measures Aggregations Level of Detail (LOD) Expressions Padding and Working with Null or Missing Values Table Calculations Filtering and Hiding Sorting and Top N Sets Bins Parameters Analyses Unexpected Results Statistics and R Tricks + Miscellaneous Techniques SQL Hacks Chart Types Formatting Bar Charts and Gantt Charts Mapping Output and Export Dashboards Security Tableau Server Performance Link List Seismometer-style animations in Tableau v2020.1 3 Replies Note: this post uses a lot of animations and might be slow to load. Also the post was updated about 2 hours after publishing thanks to a tip from Pauli Isaacs @ Tableau about thinking about viz Level of Detail and what makes a markID. I use a heart rate variability monitor and yesterday I was watching the graph on the app (sample below): At first I was thinking of this as a pulse rate” visualization but that style of monitoring has the trace of the pulse rate going from left to right, and then I realized it’s more like a seismometer or lie detector where the trace is drawn on the right while the paper is pulled to the left. It takes a little bit of data preparation but we can get that effect in Tableau with the new #VizAnimations animated transitions feature coming in v2020.1. Here’s a view using climate data from the Met Office Hadley Centre showing 170 years of variance from the 1960-1990 global mean temperature: I really like how having the marks come in from the right” makes it seems like something is happening right now”, and as the marks get to the late 20th century to the first couple of decades of the 21st the rising temperature change has a bigger impact. This kind of effect wasn’t really possible in earlier versions Read on to find out how to apply this to your own data! Overview There are several steps to this method: Identify the dimension that you are using on Pages and the sort order. In this case that’s the Year and we’re going in ascending order. Then pad out the data so that each of those values of that dimension has all the data from the preceding values. So for each Year we’ll do a self-join to get the prior years. Create calculated fields to identify the latest/last value of the dimension on Pages and create a common x axis. Adjust the animation speed so that it doesn’t overly animate. Create calculated fields to act as a display x axis. Note that technically this method will work for versions of Tableau prior to v2020.1, however with the animation controls it’s smoother. 1. At the core: a self-join to pad out the data If you’ve ever tried to use the Pages Shelf in Tableau to draw a line mark over time you’ve ended up with something like this: There’s a workaround where instead of using a line mark type we can use circles or something else and turn on Show history for Pages with mark trails and get a line”, but the color of the trail depends on the color of the current mark, so the Color Shelf isn’t very useful: Also if we hover over the mark trail there is no tooltip since there’s only one mark displayed. Now a way I like to think of the Pages Shelf in Tableau is that it’s like a flip book: https://images.app.goo.gl/FzTeRSi8ddcfq1aU6 The Pages Shelf is slicing the view into a set of pages” based on the values of the field(s) on Pages. Since Year is on Pages that means we see one year for each Page, and in this case since Year is the only dimension in the view (setting the viz level of detail aka vizLOD) there’s only one mark for each year.* Mark trails are a convenience that Tableau adds. * I’m← Older posts Search Search for: Recent Posts Seismometer-style animations in Tableau v2020.1 Parameter Actions: Using a parameter as a data source Creating a Dynamic Range Parameter” in Tableau Using a Filter Action as a Parameter Creating Lists of Values for Tableau from Text & Excel Sources About Jonathan I’m a father of an eight year-old who loves math and gymnastics. I’m also a husband, consultant for DataBlick , Tableau Zen Master and Forum Ambassador , former massage therapist, somatic experiencing practitioner, writer, and meditator. My not-so-visual blog about parenting is at http://nowpapa.wordpress.com/ . 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