I struggled mightily with this week's #MakeoverMonday. My goals was to replicate the original visualization by Bloomberg.

I knew I need to create path to connect the US at the center to each country.

I wanted to make the US the center of the of the map.

• I overthought the data prep.
• I forgot how to create the paths.
• I couldn't get the math right to offset the longitude.

The coloring and labeling was straightforward for me.

Adding the US as a circle in the middle was pretty simple.

• I looked at a previous visualization I created using paths.

• I opened the workbook and the data to see the configuration.
• I replicated that set up by adding a second set of records to the data set.
• Viewers on the livestream helped me figure out the math to offset the longitude.

The simplest way to explain the location of each country is to think of the lat/lon for the US as 0,0. Then you compare that to the lat/lon for every other country to create the offset.

I got there in the end. What do you think? Was the juice worth the squeeze?

Click the image below to access the viz. 

Proportional stacked bar charts are a good way of showing the size and proportion of data at the same time.

Have you ever felt your drill-downs could be more insightful? Dive into this tutorial to see the magic of LOD expressions within hierarchies. 

This will help us unlock deeper insights and makes data exploration even more insightful. 

Whether you're well-versed in Tableau or just looking to level up your skills, there's something here for everyone. 

Get the workbook - Link

What is a KPI?

KPIs are measurable values that indicate how well a business is performing in achieving its key objectives and goals. They provide a clear and concise snapshot of critical areas within a business.

KPIs help to:

• Monitor progress

• Identify areas of improvement

• Make data-driven decisions

In order to do this, KPIs must be tailored to specific goals and strategies.

Making KPIs Actionable

Here are 8 suggestions to ensure that KPIs are actionable and impactful.

1. Align with business objectives
   

2. Focus on relevance and simplicity

3. Set measurable targets

4. Collect accurate and timely data

5. Visualize your KPIs

6. Regularly review and update

7. Add context

8. Drill down

Actionable KPIs are vital for measuring performance and achieving results. You can drive your business forward by aligning data with goals and simplifying and visualizing KPIs effectively

Read more about KPIs in my newsletter here. Sign up so you don't miss any future newsletters at andykriebel.com.

⏬ DOWNLOAD the data, and starter and solution workbooks here. I would appreciate your support to continue making videos for you.

In this video, I show you how to resize marks (in this case circles) dependent on how many marks are in the view. For example, if all possible marks are in the view (100%), the circles should be small. If only 10% of possible marks are in the view, the circles should be large.

I show how to do this on a map, but it can be extended to scatter plots, box plots, dot plots, jittered bar chart, and more.

In a previous tip, I showed you how to calculate day over day change and build 3 KPI cards.

However, this does not cover the case when you need to ignore weekends. In this #Tableau tip, I show you how to calculate daily change excluding the weekends.

You can copy/paste the calculations from below the video. Enjoy and good luck!

Calculations

In this tip, I going to show you how to build 3 different KPI cards for measuring day over day change. In just a few steps, I’ll show you how to calculate:

1. Sales for the most recent day
2. Sales for the previous day
3. Difference in sales between those two dates
4. Percent difference in sales between those two dates

I'll then show you how to create these 3 different methods for displaying the KPIs so that you can create those that are most useful for your audience.

RESOURCES

• Data - https://data.world/vizwiz/sample-car-sales
• Month over Month Change - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViD3vclgNv8
• Year over Year Change - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuxYr4_l2ww

2023 is here and #MakeoverMonday will be here the entire you to help you continue to learn and improve. Come on the journey with us each week. Build your portfolio. Showcase your skills. You just might get that job you've been seeking. It's happened, a lot, by participating every week.

For week 1, we were analyzing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from 1979-2021. The original visualization is quite simple.

We have CO2 and total gases on the left axis and the variance to 1990 on the right. Overall, the chart is pretty easy to read, with the exception of knowing that the red line is always compared to the 1990 value. That definitely needs to be more clear. It's also missing a title, so without the website it is posted on, you wouldn't necessarily know what it's about.

For my viz, I started by reproducing the original, but it doesn't look as good because the data we have starts at 1979. So you miss the big upward curve. From there, I focused primarily on making good looking sparklines that show comparisons with a parameter action. I also showed how to create an "area chart" with multiple colors. I'm going to create a tip video for it; I like how it turned out.

Here's the livestream and below is the visualization for you to interact with. The viz does not render properly on Tableau Public, but hopefully you get the idea.

I hope you continue to join me throughout the year so that we can learn together.

Have a wonderful 2023!

Calendar heatmaps are a great way to visualize time-series data over an entire calendar year. Individual days are shaded on a light-to-dark gradient based on a measure that has been added to the visualization.

Creating a heatmap for a single month in Tableau is pretty straightforward. It gets a bit more complicated when you want to view an entire year at once. In this tip, I going to show you, step-by-step, how to create a full year calendar heatmap in Tableau. The workbook is below this video to download.

If you want to drilldown multiple levels in a scatterplot, this tip is for you. In this tip, I show you have to create a 3 level drilldown with a scatterplot.

Naturally after I showed how to create a 3 level bar chart drilldown, someone immediately asked how to do it with a scatterplot. Unlike the bar chart drilldown, the scatterplot will only show you marks for the current level. 

For example:

1. When I’m at the highest level, I see only regions.
2. When I drill down one level, I only see States within the Region selected
3. When I drill down one more level, I only see postal codes that are within the region and state I selected.

This example shows you how to drill down from Region to State to Postal Code. To use this for yourself:

1. Download the workbook
2. Copy all of the calculations into your workbook
3. Swap out the dimensions

Note that you will need to recreate the sets and set actions. This will work with any combination of 3 dimensions.

This week's data set was pretty simple. We had 21 baseball seasons and a column for each pitch type. Pivoting the metrics made it much easier to work with for me as I could then split the view by pitch type.

During #WatchMeViz (below), I create a trellis view, showed how to create groups, sets, set actions, sparklines, LODs, custom number formatting, creating a mobile view, and more.

Thank you for tuning in. Here's the video and below is my visualization.

My goal this week was to correct my failures from last week, so I focused almost exclusively on building the starburst/sunburst chart. As promised to the viewers, I will also record a separate tip video for how to build them.

Here's the WatchMeViz and the viz is below that.