Week 7 - BALT 4361 - Data Visualization & Beyond

Representing Data

Data can be represented in various ways, and how it's presented at the end of the day can help people get more out of it. Professor Todd Kelsey couldn't have said it any better than he did in his book Data Discovery: "Visualization can help you go from only delivering information to delivering insight" (Kelsey, p. 43). The example he gives in the text is that data from a single day may provide you with information, however, showing data trends is where insight can be delivered. Another point provided is that if people don't understand the data itself, they may still be impressed with a quality visualization.

Tableau

Tableau is a powerful tool that helps make sense of data when presenting to clients and customers. It's widely used by many companies around the world and can be a critical asset for many who don't already utilize its resources. A great resource of it is its marketing and KPI dashboard that presents your company's marketing data in a compelling and story-like way. Unifying all different aspects of your marketing operation into one, it can vastly separate your report from another. This can be utilized in other spaces such as a sales performance dashboard, a financial performance dashboard, and so on. Shown below is an example of a vizze from the Tableau Public gallery.

Tableau is essential for communicating complex data in an intuitive and interactive way. The example above visually moves on the website, feel free to visit it here: https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/kasia.gasiewska.holc/viz/GarbageintheOceanVOTD/GarbageintheOcean. There is a 14-day free trial, however, students and teachers can use it free for one year. Connecting data is seamless and can be used from a variety of sources from standard Microsoft applications to Google Cloud-based services. There are plenty of hands-on activities to choose from online and the only way to understand if Tableau is useful for you and or your business is to give it a try yourself!