Data Visualization is done the right way with Tableau — Packed Bubble Chart

Learn how to use bubble charts effectively and creatively!

Data analysts are required to keep up with the exponential increase in volume, velocity, and variety of the incoming data from everywhere. Every business, small or big uses data visualization to transform their data completely and make sense of it. Analysts are required to delve deeper for insights, come up with creative solutions, and do so rapidly.

Tableau Public is one tool every data analyst should be aware of. Even the not so technically hands-on users shouldn’t find any difficulties in understanding and using it. That’s how easy to use it is. It has amazing features and functionalities, all made available to the public for free!

This tool offers a range of charts and graphs to visualize data and get the needed answers. The first step to making your data make an impact is to choose the right chart. For different kinds of analysis, there are different types of charts that work best.

The underlying consideration is to ensure that readers find the data easy to understand in a way that would catch the reader’s eye, hold his/her interest, and enhance his/her understanding. This article will explore just this with the help of the chart- Packed Bubbles. Bubble charts are a great option to add visual variety on a dense dashboard. Although bar charts and scatter plots are excellent and effective visualizations, they could get monotonous to look at after a while.

This link can be used to download Tableau Public. ⬇️ https://public.tableau.com/s/

Let’s use the bubble chart to visualize the top 100 most followed brands and celebrities on Instagram. This dataset was last updated in 2016 and is taken from data. world — https://data.world/socialmediadata/most-followed-on-instagram

⚡️ First, Tableau is connected to the data source. After doing so, the relation between the class of the brand and the number of followers can be derived after dropping the dimension attribute into the column and Measure attribute to the Row as shown below.

The dimension - category, defines the bubbles and the measure -followers, defines the size of the bubbles. It’s pretty evident that the category celebrities has the highest following as it’s the largest sized bubble. Fashion is the second highest, sports the third-highest and so on. The size of some bubbles isn’t large enough to hold the name of the labels. To avoid the overlapping of labels, these bubbles aren’t marked. However, they can be hovered on to get the information that isn’t visible otherwise.

⚡️ The formatting of the chart can very easily be played around with. A few are as follows:

• The colors of the bubbles can be changed.

• The size, style, and color of the labels can be changed. The labels on all, some, selected, none, or only the maximum and minimum values of the bubbles can be made visible.

• Bubbles may or may not have an outline.

• Opacity levels of the bubbles can be changed.

⚡️ Another measure like Media Posted can be added to the color component.

Doing the above lets the readers judge the amount of media posted by each of these categories based on the gradation level of these bubbles. Darker the color, more the media posted. This broadens the mind and perspective of the readers. Correlations can be drawn like the highest media posted by the celebrities i.e. their active participation probably has a huge role to play behind their enormous fan following.

Once the chart has been created, this link can be followed to save the workbook — https://help.tableau.com/current/pro/desktop/en-us/publish_workbooks_tableaupublic.htm

A tip that could make saving your creations faster and easier is to take a screenshot! The saved screenshot would further have to be cropped so that the unwanted Title bar, Menu bars, Taskbar, etc. can be removed.

⚡ ️Another trick to catch the reader’s eye faster or add some drama to the graphs could be to add pictures in this chart. The chart obtained by tableau can be the base graph formed. To this, the colors of these bubbles can be replaced with pictures. These pictures can be a representation of the category. For example, nothing can represent sports better than sports gear.

This can be achieved by using the simplest of tools like Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, MS Paint, etc. Here it will be shown using MS Word.

The graph can be saved and inserted into the document. The oval/circle shape can be selected and its size can be increased/decreased so that it’s the exact same size as that of the circle that is being replaced. It’s positioned exactly on the bubble being replaced. The newly inserted shape has a default color and outline.

To format it, the No Outline box present in the Shape Outline menu has been checked and a picture has been inserted in it from the Shape Fill menu.

This can be done for the entire chart using one’s creative skills to the full potential. The transformation of the chart can be seen below.

It should be noted that details matter, every one of them! Typography should be given in high regard. Marking everything wherever possible is directly proportional to the reader’s understanding. Hence the marking of the number of followers for each category.

⚡️ Let’s explore another simple example. We can use this chart to evaluate which cereal brand has the highest selling products. This dataset is taken from https://github.com/reisanar/datasets/blob/master/Cereals.csv

Here, Name is the name of all products produced by all the manufacturers. The name of the manufacturer is added to the color component. Upon hovering on the bubbles, the manufacturer and product name can be seen.

From above, it clear that the pinkish-red colored bubbles are seen the most. Since the pinkish-red colored bubbles represent Kellogg’s, it’s safe to say that Kellogg’s is the clear winner. It sells the most number of products.

⚡ ️A chart like that can be used to create interesting visualizations, infographics, posters, etc. An example is shown below. This has been created using MS Paint — the simplest tool known to all.

What are you waiting for? Go on! Put on your thinking hats and create some innovative visualizations with some valuable insights 💡 💭

Happy creating! 🎉