Data Science with Tableau

How can data visualizations be standardized and pipelined for viewing by key decision makers & analysts across an organization? Made to be compelling, informative, and appealing to the eye? Draw upon data sources as various as relational database servers (e.g. SQL), spreadsheets (e.g. Google Sheets), Salesforce, or web-based data? Process ‘big data’ in a live manner for the most up-to-date output? Through our accelerated introduction, students will become fluid in using Tableau’s features to achieve all of these objectives.

This course offers an accelerated intensive learning experience with Tableau – the growing standard in business intelligence for data visualization and dashboard creation. Without prior experience, students will learn to work with multiple data sources, create compelling visualizations, and roll out their data science products for continuous, scalable outputs to key stakeholders. 

By building insight and weaving narrative, students will be empowered to harness data in a striking way that provides value to organizations large and small. We utilized 4 user cases drawn from finance (public data from major stock exchanges) and sitcom data (Game of Throne 1 ).

Goals:
Without prior experience in data visualization or science, students can become fluid in this robust tool for business analysis & intelligence at any organization (from data-driven startup to Fortune 500 company). Students will learn first principles of visualization & dashboard creation, leverage Tableau’s features for combining and manipulating large & various sources of data, gain a deeper sense of comfort & practice by ‘learning through doing’ in frequent visualization labs, and complete a capstone visualization project that sparks their imagination.

The course is well-suited for:

• Analysts/managers who frequently review data & share findings within an organization
• Consultants & external advisors who frame performance indicators & metrics for key decision makers
• Entrepreneurs growing companies where data is a central asset or offering
• Data scientists interested in utilizing Tableau’s platform & R integration to pipeline compelling visualizations that harness advanced statistical learning algorithms

Prerequisites:
Know how to use Mac, Windows. Familiarity with relational databases will be nice but not required:

• gain a greater appreciation for the logic underlying Tableau’s features
• utilize their capstone project to visualize ‘big data’ by accessing a variety of server- or cloud-based sources

Before the course begins, pre-work will be available for students interested in strengthening their ability to access and extract data from relational databases (e.g. SQL-based servers)

Outcomes
By the end of the course, you will be able to:

• Understand which visualizations best express a particular insight
• Construct advanced visualizations such as tree maps, sunburst diagrams, and geo-mapped data
• Wisely offer insight through visual dashboards constructed using principles such as the golden ratio
• Pipeline visualizations that model large-scale data in a continuous fashion servers)

Syllabus:

Week 1

• Importance of Tableau and How It Fits With Computing, Learning, & Analysis Today
• Connecting with Data & Using Multiple Sources (Relational Logic, Joining, Blending)
• Organizing your Data (Sorting, Filtering, Hierarchies, Groups, Subsets, Labeling, Aggregation)
• Measures in View (Individual/Blended/Dual Axes, Cross-tabs, Highlight Tables, Reference Lines)

Week 2

• Calculations in Tableau (Calculation Syntax & Functions, Level of Detail)
• Creating and Using Parameters To Power Interactive Visualizations
• Visualizing Relationships Between Numerical Values (Scatter Plots, Heat Maps)
• Visualizing Breakdowns of the Whole (Boxplots, Tree Maps, Donut Chart, Sunburst Diagrams)

Week 3

• Visualizing Structure, Relationships, & Trends through Machine Learning (Clustering, Regression, Forecasting, Integrating R Libraries)
• Mapping Data Geographically
• Bringing Together Visualization To Offer Insight & Narrative (Dashboards, Stories)

Week 4

• Develop capstone project using your own data and have your own goal
• Project deliverable sheet