If Power BI is Microsoft's BI tool, Tableau is the visualisation tool that built modern data storytelling. Many product, marketing and consulting teams use it as their default. This week you learn the basics: connect data, build the canonical chart types, write calculated fields, design an interactive dashboard, and publish it to Tableau Public for your portfolio.
What You'll Learn This Week
Day 1
Tableau in 10 Minutes
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Data source | Connection to a file or database |
| Worksheet | One view = one chart |
| Dashboard | A canvas combining many worksheets |
| Dimension | Descriptive field, usually categorical |
| Measure | Numeric field you aggregate |
| Marks card | Maps fields to visual properties |
| Shelves | Rows, Columns, Filters, Pages |
Tableau Public is free, with one catch: everything you publish is publicly visible. For portfolio pieces, this is a feature.
Day 2
Basic Visualisations
The flow is always: drag a dimension to Rows, a measure to Columns (or vice versa), and Tableau picks a sensible default. The Show Me panel suggests chart families compatible with your selection.
- Bar / Column - ranks and comparisons
- Line - trends over time
- Scatter - relationships between two measures
- Map - geographic, with auto-detected lat/long
- Bullet, KPI, Big Number - summaries
Day 3
Advanced Visuals
- Dual-axis: drop a second measure on the right Y-axis, right-click ``Synchronise Axis''.
- Combination charts: one measure as bars, another as line.
- Treemaps / heat maps: hierarchical / compositional data.
- Reference lines / bands: averages, targets, control bands.
- Trend lines: linear, polynomial, logarithmic - check R-squared in the tooltip.
Day 4
Calculated Fields and Parameters
A calculated field is a new column computed from existing ones - you write its formula in a Tableau expression. A parameter is a single user-controlled value any calculation can read - perfect for ``what-if'' sliders.
// Customer tier
IF [Total Revenue] >= 50000 THEN "Platinum"
ELSEIF [Total Revenue] >= 10000 THEN "Gold"
ELSEIF [Total Revenue] >= 2000 THEN "Silver"
ELSE "Bronze"
END
// % of total within partition (table calc)
SUM([Sales]) / TOTAL(SUM([Sales]))
Day 5
Interactive Dashboards
Build flow
- Each chart goes on its own worksheet first; polish there.
- File → New Dashboard. Pick a device-aware size.
- Drag worksheets, filters and parameters onto the canvas.
- Use Containers (Horizontal / Vertical) for clean alignment.
- Add Filter Actions: clicking one chart filters the others.
Day 6
Publishing and Tool Comparison
| Tool | Best at |
|---|---|
| Tableau | Visual exploration, beautiful defaults, story telling |
| Power BI | Microsoft 365 ecosystems, enterprise governance, DAX |
| R Shiny | Custom logic, statistical models, bespoke UI |
The interview question is rarely ``which is best?'' but ``why did you pick this one?''. Knowing the trade-offs cold makes you a credible analyst.
Day 7
Project: Published Tableau Dashboard
- Re-create the e-commerce dashboard from Week 8, but in Tableau.
- Three worksheets: revenue trend, region map, top-products bar.
- One dashboard with cross-filtering between all three.
- Two calculated fields (customer tier, YoY %).
- One parameter - a ``target revenue'' that drives a reference line.
- Published to Tableau Public; URL added to your portfolio.
Calculation recipes are in /data/week10-tableau-calc-recipes.txt.