Summary on Data Visualization

In this session, you learned the concepts of data analytics and data visualization, and also learned how Tableau plays an important role in both. Let’s revisit the topics that you learned in this session one by one:

• Data analytics capabilities: There are four types of data analytics capabilities. The greater the difficulty of a type, the more is its utility:

  • Descriptive analytics: It answers the question “what has happened.” For example, you can use it to determine the sales made by a retail store in the past six months.

  • Diagnostic analytics: It answers the question “why has something happened.” For example, you can use it to determine why the sales made by a store were high or low in the past six months.

  • Predictive analytics: It answers the question “what will happen.” For example, you can use it to estimate the sales that a store will make in the next year. Predictive analytics requires in-depth knowledge of statistical concepts such as regression, classification, and clustering.

  • Prescriptive analytics: It answers the question “what action should you take.” For example, a prescriptive model is applied to calculate Ola’s and Uber’s rates. It changes the cab fare according to the demand to optimize the profits generated.

• Companies using Tableau: Some of the major companies that use Tableau for data analytics globally include:

  • Apple Inc.,

  • Lenovo,

  • Cisco Systems,

  • LinkedIn,

  • Intel, and

  • Wells Fargo.

• Data formats supported: Tableau supports data in several formats. Some of these data formats include:

  • PDF,

  • JSON,

  • Text, and

  • Spreadsheet.

• Databases supported: Even the data stored in different types of databases can be integrated into Tableau (desktop version). Some of these databases include:

  • MySQL,

  • Salesforce,

  • MongoDB,

  • Amazon Redshift, and

  • Oracle.

• Tableau products: Tableau offers multiple products, which are designed to suit different analytical and visualization needs. Some of these products are as follows:

  • Tableau Desktop: It is a licensed software used for creating charts and graphs.

  • Tableau Public: It is similar to Tableau Desktop. However, Tableau Public is free and offers fewer features than Tableau Desktop.

  • Tableau Server: It is similar to Tableau Online. However, the dashboards and reports are stored in on-premise spaces in this case.

In the next session, let’s learn how to connect data files to Tableau app and build some common charts.

You can find the transtriptions of the videos form this session in the document below.