How I Taught Myself Tableau
By: Isha Garg
Tags: Tableau, Data Science, Charts, Career Development, Data Visualization

Here are some of the things which actually helped me in teaching myself the art of data visualization using Tableau.

1. Using available/pre-existing Tableau dashboards

While trying to use existing dashboards to analyze, I often needed to understand the underlying data and add new filters to further dissect the trends. So, I downloaded a copy from the server and tried to understand how the original author had structured it.

This really helped me in understanding calculated fields, types of filters, and different options to show filters.

In case you don’t have the access to any dashboards, you can do this by downloading the dashboards from Tableau Public (more on this later).

2. Tableau Online Community

Whenever I wanted to do something with data that I had no idea about, whether it is blending different sources, using selective filters, action filters, LOD expressions, I searched in Tableau forums. I would say I was always able to find that question asked. So, either I would use the answer to understand how to do what I intended or I will get to know that it isn’t supported and the workarounds to achieve a similar result. I have asked questions on the forum and people on the forum are really helpful. Here’s the link to the community forum:

3. Practice

I was involved in a pretty intense activity at the time and had a weekly meeting with C-suite and VPs to present what I had found. Since I didn’t know any other way to analyze data yet, I tried a lot of things. I mean a lot. Sometimes, I get impressed even today looking at my old dashboards from that time. Of course, everything is under NDA, so I can’t really publish it anywhere on the web, but it still makes me proud.

4. Tableau Public

After the initial few months, I got addicted to Tableau. I love storytelling using interactive data visualizations. So, I am always looking to learn new and cool ways to visualize data. Tableau has a public gallery where authors from around the world come and publish their viz. It is a great way to learn what can be accomplished using tableau. I still remember the first viz which amazed me and piqued my curiosity was by Chris Love on Titanic. Here’s the viz.

And there are so many more awesome visualizations out there. You can follow authors here who publish their work regularly and learn the craft from the experts themselves.

5. Tableau Viz Contests

From the credits under one of the viz in the public gallery, I came to know about Makeover Monday. It’s a contest organized by vizwiz where you are given a dataset and you need to build visualizations to discover insights. People across the globe participate in it and you get to see a lot of work from which you can take inspiration.

6. Other Resources

There is this Twitter group handle called #datafam. This group is amazing. You should definitely follow them for your daily dose of inspiration and to know what is happening in the world of data visualization.

VizWiz founder Andy Kriebel also has a youtube channel where he posts videos on tips to enhance your career in tableau. You can follow his youtube channel to learn more.

I hope this information helps you in your journey to learn Tableau and become a data analyst someday.

Thank you for reading and Happy learning!

P.S.- If you like what you just read, please check out my other articles. You can also consider following me on Twitter or Tableau Public.