Makeover Monday: How far have the turkey vultures flown?

Inspired by Mike Cisneros' viz this week, I thought I would look at the cumulative distance each turkey vulture traveled. And, as a bonus, I wanted to use stepped lines, which are not yet available in Tableau. Fortunately, Rody Zakovich has written a great, easy to follow tutorial.

In addition to the stepped lines, I wanted to be able to compare all the birds on the same baseline. I created a calculation for quarters since each bird was tagged and then calculated the running total of the distance along the quarters. Standardizing the data this way helps me to see which bird flew the farthest (Leo) and which bird has flown to longest (Irma, which really means Irma has been tagged the longest).

Lastly, I sent the viz to Eva for some feedback and she suggested swapping the axes so that distance was on the X and time on the Y. This definitely makes more sense since distance is the independent variable.

Fun learning exercise and Rody's blog really makes creating stepped lines so, so much easier.