Tableau TDS-C01 - Tableau Desktop Specialist

According to the official Tableau documentation:

Upon clicking on a filter, we see the following options:

Clearly, Regex Match is not one of these options!

Explanation

You don't need to know ANY programming language to use quick table calculations!

Follow along with the steps below to learn how to apply a quick table calculation to a visualization:

1) Open Tableau Desktop and connect to the Sample-Superstore data source, which comes with Tableau.

2) Navigate to a new worksheet.

3) From the Data pane, under Dimensions, drag Order Date to the Columns shelf.

4) From the Data pane, under Dimensions, drag State to the Rows shelf.

5) From the Data pane, under Measures, drag Sales to Text on the Marks Card.

6) From the Data pane, under Measures, drag Profit to Color on the Marks Card.

7) On the Marks card, click the Mark Type drop-down and select Square.

The visualization updates to look like this:

Apply the quick table calculation

1) On the Marks card, right-click SUM(Profit) and select Quick Table Calculation > Moving Average.

Note: You can only perform quick table calculations on measures in the view.

A delta symbol appears on the field to indicate that a quick table calculation is being applied to the field. The colors in the visualization update to show the moving average of profit across the years.

Explanation

Extracts are advantageous for several reasons:

1) Supports large data sets: You can create extracts that contain billions of rows of data.

2) Fast to create: If you're working with large data sets, creating and working with extracts can be faster than working with the original data.

3) Help improve performance: When you interact with views that use extract data sources, you generally experience better performance than when interacting with views based on connections to the original data.

4) Support additional functionality: Extracts allow you to take advantage of Tableau functionality that's not available or supported by the original data, such as the ability to compute Count Distinct.

5) Provide offline access to your data: Extracts allow you to save and work with the data locally when the original data is not available. For example, when you are traveling.

To work with the MOST up-do-date data, use a live connection instead!

Explanation

Pretty common question on the Tableau Desktop Specialist exam.

1) First, lets create Sheet 1. For this, drag sport to the Row shelf, and Weight to the Text mark in the Marks shelf. Change its aggregation to Average:

2) Now, for sheet 2 - Drag nationality to the view, and gold to the size mark in the Marks shelf.

NOTE: Depending on your version of Tableau , you may need to assign a Geographical role to the nationality column first as follows:

3) Now, let's create a dashboard, and use both these sheets in it:

4) Now, for the most Important step, use SHEET 2 AS A FILTER FOR SHEET 1 as follows:

Now simply click on Russia in Sheet 2, and Sheet 1 will automatically update as follows:

The benefits of using a live connection over an extract include:

B: A live connection ensures that the data in the workbook is as up-to-date as the database itself, providing fresher data compared to a static extract which is updated at intervals.

C: A live connection queries the database server directly, which means it uses the server's memory and processing power rather than relying on the client computer's resources.

A live connection does not necessarily require less network overhead (A) as it may continually send queries over the network, and it is not always faster than an extract (D) because extracts can provide quicker response times for complex queries or large datasets.

**IMPORTANT QUESTION AND EXPLANATION, PLEASE READ**

3 ways to group data -

1) Marks

2) Labels

3) Dimensions shelf.

*IMPORTANT*

If we Group the data by selecting the marks, then they remain separate marks in the view and then have the same colour. Also, a new group is created in the Dimensions shelf. Example -

Using the sample superstore dataset, first plot a bar chart showing sales for each sub-category:

Here, if we Select Phones, Chairs and Storage by selecting the MARKS (Bars), and then group them:

They remain seperate marks (BARS) but are grouped by the same colour.

Now, if we didn't do this, and rather grouped by selecting their Labels (Names):

Then they no longer remain separate Marks (bars) but are rather consolidated into a single Bar:

Finally, we can group directly from the Dimensions shelf as follows:

Now choose Phones, Chairs and Storage and Click Group:

You will now automatically have a new Dimension as follows:

Dates in Tableau will behave differently depending on whether they are a Datepart (blue) or a Datevalue (green). This affects how the axes display/behave and also how visualisations such as line charts will display. The difference essentially boils down to Dateparts behaving like a dimension as opposed to a measure which is how Datevalues behave. This means that Dateparts behave like discrete categories on the view whereas Datevalues are more like continuous numeric values.

Dateparts are discrete and they behave the same as dimension filters. If all dates are used on the filter then each individual date will be a datepart that can be selected/excluded. This is the same for each level of date, if datepart months is placed on filters January to December will be tick-able options in the filter. This also means that conditions and top/bottom filters can be applied to datepart filters like any other dimension filter.

Datevalues placed on filters behave like measure filters. A min and a max date can be set and there is a relative dates option which allows you to choose things like only show the previous 3 months or years etc.

To update the font of an entire workbook in Tableau, you should use the "Format Workbook" pane. This feature allows you to set and modify the default font settings for the entire workbook, ensuring consistency in font style across all sheets and dashboards. It's a global setting that applies to all visual elements in the workbook, including titles, captions, axis labels, and other text elements.

Extracts would be more beneficial for analyzing historical prices where we won't be making use of any real time data being streamed. Same is the case for enormous datasets having billions of rows (extracts will be more efficient in analyzing subsets of such large data).

As for live stock prices, flight updates, real time updates from production or mission critical systems - having a live connection is the most logical choice, since we need access to the most fresh and recent data possible at all times!