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October 1, 2020

#WorkoutWednesday 2020 Week 32: COVID-19 New Case Trends

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As I continue to catch up on Workout Wednesday challenges I've missed, I'm picking and choosing those that looking interesting at first glance (and that I think are doable in a short amount of time). Week 32 was one I knew I could get done quickly since it was very similar to 2017 week 7. Actually, since the columns and rows were provided to use already via a CASE statement, the trellis part of the exercise required no calculations and no work.

The toughest part was normalizing the calculation within each State. The key here is to think about each State individually, find the highest value, and then compare all of the other dates to that value. I did this by putting each State and date into a row, creating a calculation to get the largest value, then computing the necessary ratio. Once I had that, it was simple to turn it into a chart.

To get the State names in the middle of each chart, think about how you can count half of the day in each chart. Then take that value and add it to the first date and you'll get a single date that's halfway across the date range. This solution will be flexible for any new data that would be included.

Some difference between mine and Luke's

  1. I didn't filter the dates; I decided to use the entire data set, but keep in mind that I did this several weeks after Luke posted the challenge.
  2. I created a mobile version as well.

And with that, here's my completed #WorkoutWednesday for week 32 2020.


April 9, 2017

Makeover Monday: What Does the Gold-Crude Oil Ratio Mean?

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This is a pretty special week for me. 10 years ago, I downloaded Tableau and my life was forever changed. So I thought for Makeover Monday week 15 that we should look back at one of my very early blog posts. It turns out that this post was kind of like Makeover Monday, but I didn't call it Makeover Monday back then. I created this visualisation about the relationship between gold and oil prices:


An interesting sidebar: I went back to the original blog post, downloaded the workbook, then opened it to see how I had shaped the data. Turns out I build this in Tableau 4.1. How cool is that!?! Dashboards had just been added to Tableau. Ahh, the good old days! People starting to use Tableau now have no idea how good they have it.

Anyway, back to the makeover.

What works well?
  • Minimal use of color
  • Axes are clearly labeled
  • Trend line adds context
  • Scatterplot portrays the relationship well

What could be improved?
  • The title doesn't tell me much at all.
  • What does each dot mean?
  • Is there more to the story?
  • What does being above or below the trend line actually mean?

Keeping all of these questions in mind, I had an idea. Instead of looking at a scatterplot again, does it make sense to look at the gold price compared to the oil price as a ratio? That is, the price of one ounce of gold divided by the price of one barrel of crude oil. I wasn't really sure if this metric was valid. It made sense in my head, so I ran it by Eva who said it made sense to her too.

Ok great, but what does this ratio actually mean? I turned to Google and found a few great articles, one of which I refer to in my final visualisation. First, I looked at this article from The Telegraph, which included a chart of the gold-oil ratio. Phew! I'm not crazy after all.


Next, I read this article that explained in simple terms with examples, what the gold-oil ratio means. This was incredibly helpful in crafting the story of my viz. Referenced inside of the article was a very detailed research paper on the gold-oil ratio that provided a tremendous amount of context. This bit of research didn't take long and it really helped solidify the ideas that were in my head.

With all this in mind, here's my Makeover Monday week 15 about the gold-oil ratio.

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