Recreating my First Tableau Viz
Transitioning careers without any experience in the field you are trying to transition into is a monumental task. Without a game plan, it seems like an impossible feat. My strategy: build on my background in Mathematics to create a portfolio of work that can land me a swanky new job as an entry-level analyst.
My job transition roadmap began at Merit America where I participated in the Data Analytics program to developed foundational skills like SQL, Tableau, and R programming. Great, awesome, cool… except, I mistakenly forgot to save most of my projects. To have any experience to show for, I’m working my way back up one project at a time.
Lesson learned: SAVE EVERYTHING!
Project 1: My First Tableau Visualization
I received my certification Share Data Through the Art of Visualization through Coursera back in October of 2022. It is now the middle of December and I’m rusty so I’m beginning with something nice and easy to generate some kind of momentum. Therefore, It’s time to revisit my first Tableau project.
What am I visualizing: CO2 per capita data by country
What method: Treemap
The Google Analytics Course walkthrough has you display the data points on a symbol map but the data is too hard to read given that there are 195 countries and there is no color gradient as the CO2 metric increases. Because it’s hard to read, the data in the first viz doesn’t really tell a story.
I discovered I like the treemap better by scrolling through some generated visualizations under the “Show Me” tab. The story is clearer with the treemap. This viz answers the question: which countries emit the most CO2 per capita and how do they compare to others?
What I learned (and relearned):
- SAVE EVERYTHING!
- maps aren’t always the clearest way to display country data
- the “Show Me” function on Tableau does a lot of heavy lifting when figuring out the best graphical representation of your data
- the best visualization for a project depends on the story you want your data to tell
