Elevation, Voronoi and other spatial specialties in Tableau
By: Judit Csonka
Tags: Dataviz, Mapbox, Tableau

People are generally lazy, but the laziness can be overridden through aesthetically pleasing content. We want visualizations that effortlessly communicates the core idea. The new Tableau Mapbox Extension now enables you to do just that with 3D visualizations and beautiful Geospatial Analytics.

It can do clustering, grids, Voronoi, and for the first time in Tableau — 3D extrusions.

This is to bridge the gap between the current capabilities of Tableau Maps and the tools your were hoping to have and use in Tableau. This new Tableau extension is all about context, pattern and distribution.

Together with mapbox, my colleagues have created this very cool extension that will help you pursue just that. Now with the Tableau’s Mapbox Extension, you can see all the information in a very interactive visualization that empowers your Tableau Dashboard.

Living in a busy metropolitan area with my five-year-old, safety has always been in the forefront of my mind. Thus, it is just natural to wonder how many and what type of police incidents have been around the new Starschema U.S. headquarters. You can try it yourself.

You can get the extension from a trex file from here: https://www.mapbox.com/tableau/

Once the extension is downloaded into your dashboard, it will automatically interact with your visualization.

Let’s see it in details.

The first set of visualization you get, are clusters with densely packed points. However, you can always change these by clustering them using an algorithm, in order to see patterns.

Now let’s see it, if you use a previously filtered date to seven major types of police incidents. This way you can explore a visualization that is simple and easy to understand.

You can configure your data to see it in a “basic” map style. It displays the street on your map on a very clean way.

As you move around your visualization, you can zoom in and out. It works very fast and fluid. Your clusters can also expand and contract. It interacts easily and precisely with your data.

With a dataset that includes years, or specific time periods, you can also filter your data in your visualization with simultaneously interacting with your mapbox extension. This way you can also display a chosen time period in your extension.

Clustering is great, and it is a nice way to bring densely populated data together without a bunch of data sitting on your map. However, what if you would like to understand how those points actually relate to each other. The answer is to grid your visualization.

With this new extension, you can display your data in a square grid, a hex grid, or a density grid. You can also customize it to be in kilometers or miles, and customize your grid radius to generate how your data relate to each other.

You can also change it from a square grid to a hex grid.

In addition, this mapbox extension brings voronoi into Tableau. Voronoi is basically measuring how far every point is from every other point. Smaller Voronoi cells mean that the cells are tighter, larger Voronoi cells mean that the points are further from each other.

Finally, the most eye catching feature is the 3D data elevation. It allows you to see your data in a very convenient way, providing you with instant information by simply viewing it in 3D.

Should you need more information about it, please do not hesitate to contact us at Starschema.