Video Notes 6

Why data visualization Matters

Welcome back, future data analyst. As a budding analyst, you'll be exposed to a lot of data.
People learn and absorb data in so many different ways, and one of the most effective ways
that this can happen is through visualization. Data visualization is the graphic representation
and presentation of data. In reality, it's just putting information into an image to make it
easier for other people to understand. If you've ever looked at any kind of map, whether it's
paper or online, then you know exactly how helpful visuals could be.

Data visualizations are definitely having a moment right now. Online we are surrounded by
images that show information in all kinds of ways, but the history of data visualization goes
back way further than the Web. Visualizing data began long ago with maps, which are the
visual representation of geographic data. This map of the known world is from 1502. Map
makers continued to improve their visualizations as new lands were charted. New data was
collected about those locations, and new methods for visualizing the data were created.

Scientists and mathematicians began to truly embrace the idea of arranging data visually in
the 1700s and 1800s. This bar graph is from 1821 and it doesn't look too different from bar
graphs that we see today. But since the beginning of the digital age of data analytics in the
1990s, the scope and reach of visualizations have grown along with the data they graphically
represent. As we keep learning how to more efficiently communicate with visuals, the quality
of our insights continue to grow too.

Today we can quantify human behavior through data, and we've learned to use computers to
collect, analyze and visualize that data. As an analyst in today's world, you'll probably split
your time with data visuals in two ways: looking at visuals in order to understand and draw
conclusions about data or creating visuals from raw data to tell a story. Either way, it's always
good to keep in mind that data visualizations will be your key to success.

This is especially true once you reach the point where you're ready to present the results of
your data analysis to an audience. Getting people to understand your vision and thought
process can feel challenging. But a well-made data visualization has the power to change
people's minds. Plus, it can help someone who doesn't have the same technical background or
experience as you form their own opinions.

So here's a quick rule for creating a visualization. Your audience should know exactly what
they're looking at within the first five seconds of seeing it. Basically, this means the visual
should be clear and easy to follow. In the five seconds after that, your audience should
understand the conclusion your visualization is making. Even if they aren't totally familiar
with the research you've been doing. They might not agree with your conclusion, and that's
okay. You can always use their feedback to adjust your visualization and go back to the data
to do further analysis.

So now let's talk about what we have to do to create a visualization that's understandable,
effective and, most importantly, convincing. Let's start from the beginning. Data
visualizations are a helpful tool for fitting a lot of information into a small space. To do this,
you first need to structure and organize your thoughts. Think about your objectives and the
conclusions you've reached after sorting through data. Then think about the patterns you've
noticed in the data, the things that surprised you and, of course, how all of this fits together
into your analysis.

Identifying the key elements of your findings help set the stage for how you should organize
your presentation. Check out this data visualization made by David McCandless, a well-
known data journalist. This graphic includes four key elements: the information or data, the
story, the goal and the visual form. It's arranged in a four-part Venn diagram, which tells us
that all four elements are needed for a successful visualization.

So far, you've learned a lot about the data used in visualizations. That's important because it's
a key building block for your visualization. The story or concept adds meaning to the data
and makes it interesting. We'll talk more about the importance of data storytelling later, but
for now, just remember that the story and the data combined provide an outline of what
you're trying to show. The goal or function makes the data both useful and usable, and the
visual form creates both beauty and structure.

With just two elements, you can create a rough sketch of a visual. This could work if you're
at an early stage, but won't give you a complete visualization because you'd be missing other
key elements. Even using three elements gets you closer, but you're not quite finished. For
example, if you combine information, goal, and visual form without any story, your visual
will probably look fine, but it won't be interesting.

On their own, each element has value, but visualizations only become truly powerful and
effective when you combine all four elements in a way that makes sense. And when you
think about all of these elements together, you can create something meaningful for your
audience. At Google I make sure to develop visualizations to tell stories about data that
include all four of these elements, and I can tell you that each element is a key to a
visualization success. That's why it's so important for you as the analyst to pay close attention
to each element as we move forward.

Other people might not know or understand the exact steps you took to come to the
conclusions you've made, but that shouldn't stop them from understanding your reasoning.
Basically, an effective data visualization should lead viewers to reach the same conclusion
you did, but much more quickly. Because of the age we live in, we're constantly being shown
different ways to view and absorb information. This means that you've already seen lots of
visuals you can reference as you design your own visualizations.

You have the power to tell convincing stories that could change opinions and shift mindsets.
That's pretty cool. But you also have the responsibility to pay attention to the perspectives of
others as you create these stories. So it's important to always keep that in mind. Coming up,
we'll start drawing connections between data and images to create a strong foundation for
your visual masterpieces. I can't wait to get started.

Connect images with Data

Hello again. Earlier we talked about why data visualizations are so important to both analysts
and stakeholders. Now we'll discuss the connections you can make between data and images
in your visualizations. Visual communication of data is important to those using the data to
help make decisions. To better understand the connection between data and images, let's talk
about some examples of data visualizations and how they can communicate data effectively.
You maybe come across lots of these in your daily life. We'll explore them a little bit more
here.
A good place to start is a bar graph. Bar graphs use size contrast to compare two or more
values. The horizontal line of a bar graph usually placed at the bottom, is called the x-axis,
and bar graphs with vertical bars, the x-axis is used to represent categories, time periods, or
other variables. The vertical line of a bar graph usually placed to the left is called the y-axis.
The y-axis usually has a scale of values for the variables. In this example, the time of day is
compared to someone's level of motivation throughout the whole workday. Bar graphs are a
great way to clarify trends. Here, it's clear this person's motivation is low at the beginning of
the day and gets higher and higher by the end of the workday. This type of visualization
makes it very easy to identify patterns.

Another example is a line graph. Line graphs are a type of visualization that can help your
audience understand shifts or changes in your data. They're usually used to track changes
through a period of time, but they can be paired with other factors too. In this line graph,
we're using two lines to compare the popularity of cats and dogs over a period of time. With
two different line colors, we can immediately tell that dogs are more popular than cats. We'll
talk more about using colors and patterns to make visualizations more accessible to audiences
later too. Even as a line moves up and down, there's a general trend upwards and the line for
dogs always stays higher than the line for cats.

Now let's check out another visualization you'll probably recognize. Say hello to the pie
chart. Pie charts show how much each part of something makes up the whole. This pie chart
shows us all the activities that make up someone's day. Half of it's spent working, which is
shown by the amount of space that the blue section takes up. From a quick scan, you can
easily tell which activities make up a good chunk of the day in this pie chart and which ones
take up less time.

Earlier, we learned how maps help organize data geographically. The great thing about maps
is they can hold a lot of location-based information and they're easy for your audience to
interpret. This example shows survey data about people's happiness in Europe. The
borderlines are well-defined and the colors added make it even easier to tell the countries
apart. Understanding the data represented here, which we'll come back to again later, can
happen pretty quickly.

So data visualization is an excellent tool for making the connection between an image and the
information it represents, but it can sometimes be misleading. One way visualizations can be
manipulated is with scaling and proportions. Think of a pie chart. Pie charts show proportions
and percentages between categories. Each part of the circle or pie should reflect its
percentage to the whole, which is equal to 100 percent. So if you want to visualize your sales
analysis to show the percentage of your company sales that come from online transactions,
you could use a pie chart. The size of each slice would be the percentage of total sales that it
represents. So if your online sales accounted for 60 percent, the slice would be 60 percent of
the whole pie.

Now here's a misleading pie chart. It's supposed to show opinions about pizza toppings, but
each slice or segment represents more than one option. They all add up to well over 100
percent. There is lots of ingredients listed below the image that are not even included in the
visual data. All of the segments are the same size, even though they're supposed to be
showing different values. If a visualization looks confusing then it probably is confusing.

Let's explore another example where the size of the graphic components comes into play.
This time with a bar chart. In a truncated bar chart like this one, the values on the y-axis don't
start at zero. The data points start at 9,100 and at intervals of 100. This makes it seem like the
data, let's say, it's for novel clicks per day on different website links, is fairly wide-ranging. In
this view, website E seems to clearly receive way more clicks than website D, which receives
more clicks than website C and so on. While the graph is clear and the elements are easy to
understand, the way the data is presented is misleading.

Let's try to fix this by changing the graph's y-axis, so that it starts at zero instead. Now, the
difference between the website clicks per day don't look nearly as drastic. By making the y-
axis start at zero, we're changing the visual proportions to be more accurate and more honest.
Some platforms always start their y-axis at zero, but other programs like spreadsheets might
not fix the y-axis. So it's important to keep this in mind when creating visualizations.

By following the conventions of data analysis, you'll be able to avoid misleading

visualizations. You always want your visualization to be clear and easy to understand, but
never at the expense of communicating ideas that are true to the data. So we've talked about
some effective data-driven visualizations like bar graphs, line graphs, and pie charts, and
when to use them. On top of that, we've discussed some things to avoid in your visualizations
to keep them from being misleading. Coming up, we'll check out how to make those
visualizations reach your target audience. See you then.
 A recipe for powerful visualization

Hey, there. You're back and ready to learn how to create powerful data visualizations.
Coming up, we'll explore how to take our findings and turn them into compelling visuals.
Earlier, we discussed the relationship between data and images. Now we'll build on that to
explore what visualizations can reveal to your audience and how to make your graphics as
effective as possible.

One of your biggest considerations when creating a data visualization is where you'd like
your audience to focus. Showing too much can be distracting and leave your audience
confused. In some cases, restricting data can be a good thing. On the other hand, showing too
little can make your visualization unclear and less meaningful. As a general rule, as long as
it's not misleading, you should visually represent only the data that your audience needs in
order to understand your findings.

Now let's talk about what you can show with visualizations. Change over time is a big one. If
your analysis involves how the data has changed over a certain period, which could be days,
weeks, months, or years, you can set your visualization to show only the time period relevant
to your objective.

This visualization shows the search interests in news story topics like environment and
science and social issues. The viz is set up to show how the search entries change day to day.
The bubbles represent the most popular topic on each day in a given part of the US. As new
stories come up, the data changes to reflect the topic of those stories. If we wanted the data
for weekly or monthly news cycles, we change the interactive feature to show changes by
week or month.

Another situation is when you need to show how your data is distributed. A histogram
resembles a bar graph, but it's a chart that shows how often data values fall into certain
ranges. This histogram shows a lot of data and how it's distributed on a narrow range from a
negative one to a positive one. Each bin or bucket, as the bar is called, contains a certain
number of values that fall into one small part of the range.
If you don't need to show that much data, other histograms would be more effective, like this
one about the length of dinosaurs. Here the bins or buckets of data values are segmented. You
can show each value that falls into each part of the range.

If your data needs to be ranked, like when ordering the number of responses to survey
questions, you should first think about what you want to highlight in your visualization. Bar
charts with horizontal bars effectively show data that are ranked, with bars arranged in
ascending or descending order. A bar chart should always be ranked by value, unless there's a
natural order to the data like age or time, for example.

This simple bar chart shows metals like gold and platinum ranked by density. An audience
would be able to clearly see the ranking and quickly determine which metals had the highest
density, even if this database included a lot more metals.

Correlation charts can show relationships among data, but they should be used with caution
because they might lead viewers to think that the data shows causation. Causation or a cause-
effect relationship occurs when an action directly leads to an outcome. Correlation and
causation are often mixed up because humans like to find patterns even when they don't exist.

If two variables look like they're associated in some way, we might assume that one is
dependent on the other. That implies causation, even if the variables are completely
independent. If we put that data into a visualization, then it would be misleading. But
correlation charts that do show causation can be effective.

For example, this correlation chart has one line of data showing the average traffic for Google
searches on Tuesdays in Brazil. The other lines for a specific date of search traffic, June 15th.
The data is automatically correlated because both lines are representing the same basic
information. But the chart also shows one big difference. When a football match or soccer
match for Americans began on June 15th, the search traffic showed a significant drop. This
implies causation. Football is a very popular and important sport for Brazilians, and the data
in this chart verifies that.

We've now talked about time series charts, histograms, ranked bar charts, and correlation
charts. Each of these charts can visualize a different type of analysis. Your business objective
and audience will help figure out which of these common visualizations to choose. Or you
may want to check some other kinds of visualizations out there. There are also glossary
visualizations that you'll be able to reference later.

That wraps up our lesson on creating visualizations. Coming up next, we'll add some more
layers to your planning and execution of visuals. Hang on tight.

Dynamic Visualization

Hey, great to see you again. So far we've shown that there's lots of choices you'll make as a
data analyst when creating visualizations. Each of your choices should help make sure that
your visuals are meaningful and effective. Another choice you'll need to make is whether you
want your visualizations to be static or dynamic.

Static visualizations do not change over time unless they're edited. They can be useful when
you want to control your data and your data story. Any visualization printed on paper is
automatically static. Charts and graphs created in spreadsheets are often static too. For
example, the owner of this spreadsheet might have to change the data in order for the
visualization to update.

Now, dynamic visualizations are interactive or change over time. The interactive nature of
these graphics means that users have some control over what they see. This can be helpful if
stakeholders want to adjust what they're able to view.

Let's check out a visualization about happiness that we've created in Tableau. Tableau is a
business intelligence and analytics platform that helps people see, understand, and make
decisions with data. Visualizations in Tableau are automatically interactive. We'll go into the
dashboard to see how the happiness score has changed from 2015 to 2017.

We can check this out in our 12th slide, yearly happiness changes. On the left are the country
level changes in happiness score. The countries are sorted by largest increase to largest
decrease. On the right, there's a map with overall happiness scores. The color scale moves
from blue for the countries with the highest happiness score, to red for those with the lowest.

If you look below the map, you'll notice a year to view slider where people can choose which
year's happiness scores to display on the map. It's currently set for 2016, but if someone
wants to know the scores for 2015 or 2017, they can adjust the slider. They could then make
note of how the color-coding and score labels change from year to year.

Other dynamic visualizations upload new data automatically. These bar graphs continually
update data by the minute and second. Other data visuals can do the same by day, week or
month. If you need to, you can show trends in real-time. Having an interactive visualization
can be useful for both you and the audience you share it with.

But it's good to remember that the more power you give the user, the less control you have
over the story you want the data to tell. It's something to keep in mind as you learn how to
create your own visualizations. You want to find the right balance between interactivity and
control.

Something else to consider is, a choice between using a static or dynamic visualization. This
will usually depend on the data you're visualizing, the audience you're presenting to, and how
you're giving your presentation.

Now that we've made some decisions about what kind of data vis we want to create, we can
start thinking about the design, which is exactly where we're going to start talking about next
time. See you there.

Elements of art

Hello, and welcome back. You probably didn't think you'd be learning about art in a data
analytics course, but that's exactly what we're going to do. Both data analysts and artists use
elements of art in their work. We'll introduce those elements to you here, and we'll show you
how to apply them to visualizations later. The elements we'll check out are line, shape, color,
space and movement. Now, these aren't the only elements to consider, but these particular
ones can add value to your data viz by making them more visually effective and compelling.

Lines in visualizations can be curved or straight, thick or thin, vertical, horizontal, or

diagonal. They can add visual form to your data and help build a structure for your
visualization. These charts show some of the variety that lines can bring to your data viz. The
combo chart shows two different types of lines, both providing a graphic for the data. The
line chart does the same, but uses curved lines instead.

Shapes are also known for their variety. Shapes in visualizations should always be two-
dimensional. This is because three-dimensional objects in a visualization can complicate the
visual and confuse the audience. Shapes are also a great way to add eye-catching contrast,
especially size contrast, to your data story. This circle used for a pie chart lets someone
quickly understand the data in a familiar format. Shapes with symmetry are usually more
familiar to people, so there's less work for the audience to do when viewing symmetrical data
viz. But the asymmetrical shapes in this map are still instantly recognizable as countries. It's
good to note that the data you're sharing with your audience will usually inform the types of
shapes you want to use in your data viz.

Next, we have colors, and colors are, well, colors. Of course, in the eyes of artists and
analysts, colors can be much more complex. Colors can be described by their hue, intensity,
and value. The hue of a color is basically its name—red, green, blue and so on. Intensity is
how bright or dull a color is, and finally, there's value. The value is how light or dark the
colors are in a visualization. In more scientific terms, value indicates how much light is being
reflected. Dark values with some black added are called shades of color, like these shades of
green. Light values with white added are called tints, like these tints of blue.

In this map, there are shades and tints of gray. The value of these colors helps us understand
the population data in the map, and varying the color's value can be a very effective way to
draw our audience's attention to specific areas.

Space is the area between, around, and in the objects. There should always be space in data
visualizations—just not too much or too little. For example, the space between the bars of a
bar graph like this one should be smaller than the width of the bars themselves. This will
draw the viewer's attention to the bar and the data it represents instead of the empty space.
Finally, there's movement. Movement is used to create a sense of flow or action in a
visualization. One of my favorite examples is the data viz The Wealth and Health of Nations.
This viz showcases a correlation between the financial health and physical health of nations.
It traces these elements over time so you can see how the two correlated effects play out. The
movement pulls in data from the 1800s all the way up until recently. The interactivity allows
for a greater volume of data to be displayed and will reveal multiple stories from the same
data visualization.

Remember, this is something that should be used sparingly. There's a fine line between
attracting attention and distracting the audience. A static image lets you control all elements
of the story you want to tell. When you start incorporating movement and interactivity, the
story is controlled by whoever is controlling the interactivity—whether that's you or possibly
your audience if you've turned control over to them. We'll discuss this delicate balance later
on in the course.

When you bring many of these art elements together in a visualization like this one about sea
levels, it can be beautiful and provoking. It proves that there's a place for creative expression
in data analytics. Coming up, we'll continue exploring ways to add meaningful creative
expression to your data viz. Bye for now.

Data visualization with Tableau

Hello again. We've already discussed how helpful data visualizations can be when we want to
fit a lot of knowledge into a small space. Now it's time to explore a powerful tool that can
help you create these visualizations and bring your data to life. It's called Tableau, a visual
analytics platform that makes it a lot easier to explore and manage data.

You might remember hearing a bit about Tableau in some of our earlier discussions, but
you're about to discover even more. Plus, when you get comfortable with Tableau, you'll find
it even easier to use similar tools, giving you another skill that will help you stand out in the
job hunt.
Coming up, we'll cover some of the features that make Tableau effective for visualizations
and why it's used across industries. After that, the fun really starts. We'll jump right in and
explore the Tableau interface, identifying and applying the various tools it has to offer. I'll
show you how to add data sources, control visual elements, and work with a variety of
features that will make your visualization really powerful.

Like any software platform, there's some best practices to keep in mind. So I'll show you
some examples of the good and the bad when it comes to visualizations. We'll also get
creative using color vision deficiency palettes to make our visualizations more accessible,
and we'll show you how multiple data sources can be combined to tell a more comprehensive
story.

By the time we wrap up here, you'll be able to publish your own visualizations on Tableau. I
am so excited to lead you on this Tableau tour. It's another useful tool that you'll be able to
turn to as a future data analyst so that you can visualize and publish data you care about.
After all, data has a story, and this is your chance to share it with others.

Tableau Public and other online tools

Welcome back. Mastering online tools like Tableau will make it easier for your audience to
understand difficult concepts or identify new patterns in your data. Need to help a news outlet
showcase changing real estate prices in regional markets? Check. Want to help a nonprofit
use their data in better ways to streamline operations? Check. Need to explore what video
games sales look like over the past few decades? Double check.

Many different kinds of companies are using Tableau right now to do all of these things and
more. This means there's a good chance you'll end up using it at some point in your career.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, let's talk about what Tableau actually is.

You might remember learning that Tableau is a business intelligence and analytics platform
that you can use online to help people see, understand, and make decisions with data. But it's
not all business all the time. Take this data viz, for example, created by Tableau enthusiast
Steve Thomas to record Bigfoot sightings across the US. It's available on Tableau Public,
which we'll be using together in our activities in this course.

Tableau can help you make and easily share interactive dashboards, maps, and graphs with
your data. Without any coding, you can connect to data in lots of formats like Excel, CSV,
and Google Sheets. You might also find yourself working with a company that uses another
option, like Looker or Google Data Studio, for example.

Like Tableau, Looker and Google Data Studio help you take raw data and bring it to life
visually, but each does this in different ways. For example, while Tableau's offered in a
variety of formats like browser and desktop, Looker and Google Data Studio are completely
browser-based.

But here's the great news. Once you learn the fundamentals of Tableau, you'll find they easily
transfer to other visualization tools. Ready to get started using it? Then, without further ado,
meet Tableau up next.

Meet tableau

Hello, and welcome to the intersection of analytics and art, the place where data analysts like
me go to unleash the true potential of data with meaningful visuals, and the place where
future data analysts like you can also go to learn how to do this. Welcome to Tableau, one of
the many visualization platforms that helps you do more with your data.

When you turn data into a visualization, you get to watch it transform before your eyes into a
meaningful story that people can connect to and care about. Visualizations in Tableau are
dynamic, not static. As a quick refresher, dynamic visualizations are interactive or change
with time. The interactive nature of these graphics means your audience has some control
over what they see, and you have incredible flexibility with how you create them.
So let's create our own visualization using a preloaded table on Tableau Public. It's important
to note that there's different ways to create visualizations in Tableau. Tableau has a few
different offerings, but for this course we're using Tableau Public in browser, which is free.
One cool thing about Tableau Public is the public gallery with data viz examples from across
the web.

For now, you'll be working with one of these examples from the gallery. You'll be copying
over data workbooks to your own profile to start creating and publishing visualizations. To
get started, sign into your Tableau Public account. You can check out an earlier reading for
more details. Then, to access the Workbook, open the Google Career Certificates page on
Tableau Public by clicking the link included in this video and the reading from earlier.

This opens a new tab that is still linked to your account. Here's what the page should look
like. There are a few workbooks loaded up with different data sets that you can save to your
own profile. These are a great starting point for creating your own visualizations. There will
also be a resource following this video that goes through how to download Tableau and load
your own data. But for now, let's use this gallery as a starting point.

Now click to view the workbook titled Just the Data – World Happiness. This brings up the
data table we use to help create the World Happiness data viz that's in the gallery. Next, go to
the menu in the upper right corner and click Make a copy. At this point, Tableau will save a
copy of this workbook to your own profile, so you can create your own visualizations.

Now that you're working in your own copy, create a new worksheet so you can build a data
viz from scratch. You'll click on Worksheet in the top menu, and then New Worksheet. To
start building your data viz, add Country as a detail in the marks shelf. You can do this by
dragging the Country table over to the Detail icon. This sets up your viz as a world map to
represent the data in the table.

Next, add the Happiness Score to the color on the mark shelf. This applies a color scheme to
the viz, in this case, shades of blue. This range of colors doesn't offer a lot of contrast,
especially for people with color vision deficiencies. So to adjust the colors, click the Color
menu and click Edit Colors. Then change the color scheme to Green-Blue Diverging and
check the box for stepped colors, which shows a clearer difference between the highest and
lowest happiness score.
Darker blue means a higher happiness score, whereas darker green relates to a lower
happiness score. You can see this broken down in the scale, so with just a couple of steps we
have an interesting visualization that shows happiness data in a way that's easy to digest. The
countries and colors on the map are readable and offer some great insights.

But let's keep going so we can explore more Tableau features to refine your data viz. Because
there are three years of data in the table we're using, you can filter the data to only include
2016. Using multiple years can also be useful depending on your objective. Regardless, you
have lots of options for filtering. So we'll add Year to the filter shelf. Then we'll choose to
filter by year, and we'll select 2016.

Let's focus our visualization on one region — the European region. To do this, move your
cursor to find the view toolbar. Use the tools in this toolbar to pan to and zoom in on the
European region. This takes some time and practice. Once you have a pretty good view of
Europe and its surrounding areas, use the shape tools in the same toolbar to select as much of
Europe as you can. Since we're practicing, make your best guess if you're not sure which
countries to include.

If you were working on a visualization that you were going to share with others, you'd want
to double check that it was accurate. Hover your cursor over one of the countries and it shows
you data about that specific country, as well as all the countries you've selected in the region.
Then, use the Lasso selection tool to select just a few countries like this. Choose Keep Only
— this applies another filter, this time to the countries you're including in your viz.

You'll notice that the color scheme of these countries is updated. This reflects that the range
of colors is now only being applied to these countries. Countries in this region might have
been in the same part of the range when compared to the rest of the world, but now they're in
different parts because the data being measured is specific to this region.

To make your viz even better, add the Happiness Score as a label in the map. You can now
see a happiness score for each country on the map. This adds an extra layer of detail to the viz
to help make a connection to the actual data. There's an option to change the data type of the
happiness scores from decimals to whole numbers. But when you do this, you lose the
contrast that the values with the decimals offer. So change it back to show the happiness
score as a decimal.
Now, to make it even more interactive, let's add a filter with a slider. This will allow your
audience to filter by happiness score, so they can focus on fewer countries. But first, let's
bring in more of the map we started with. To do this, hover on the map and select the zoom
home icon in the toolbar to reveal more countries on the map.

Next we're going to add Happiness Score to the filter shelf. We'll select All Values and click
Next. Then for the range of values, we'll click OK to accept the default settings. In the filter
shelf, click the drop-down to open the menu for the Happiness Score and select Show Filter.
If we select the drop-down for the menu again, we can confirm that Show Filter has a
checkmark next to it. You can toggle the checkmark to display or not display the filter.

When Show Filter is marked, a slider is displayed to the right of the map. Now try filtering to
show a happiness score of 6.0 or below. And there you have it — our first visualization based
on data we brought in from an external source. Pretty powerful, right?

We'll save our viz so we can admire it anytime we want to, and maybe even practice using
the Tableau tools with it. It's always important to save your work, but make sure not to
include any personal information in your file name. All of the data visualizations created in
Tableau Public are visible to, well, the public.

You can also keep your visualizations hidden — you'll see the eye with a slash through it on
your viz, and the viz will remain hidden. It's up to you, but lots of data viz created by users
like you are viewable. In fact, you can easily check them out by searching on Tableau Public.
Then you can search for any kind of data viz, including World Happiness visualizations.

You'll come across all types of data viz, many with advanced settings. Some of the examples
you'll find in the gallery are stronger than others. Coming up, we'll talk about effective data
visualizations and some ways you can make your data viz work even stronger. See you soon.

Create data visualization in Tableau

Hi and welcome back. In this video, we're going to use Tableau to create a database, a great
way to share insights with others. To begin, you'll need to download the data set we'll use for
this activity. Click the link to create a copy of the data set and download it. If you don't have
a Google account, download the data set directly from the attachment.

As we go through the steps, you can put this video on one side of the screen and follow along
in another window. You might notice your screen is slightly different from what you see
here. Tableau might have updated its interface, but the steps should be pretty much the same.

First, log in to Tableau Public. If you haven't created an account, go back to the reading about
logging into Tableau Public. Okay, now go to the circle and select My Profile. From there,
choose Create a Viz. This will open the Tableau Public interface.

From the Connect to Data window, go to the Files tab and upload the CO2 data set we
downloaded earlier. Or you can navigate to the Data tab in the Tableau Public interface.
Under the drop-down, click New Data Source, then open the CO2 data set.

After the data uploads, the screen will show the data source interface. Underneath
Connections, double-click on the sheet CO2 data cleaned to load that data into the main part
of the screen. You can also drag and drop the sheet into the area where it says Drag tables
here. Click Update Now to preview the data you opened in the bottom portion of the screen.
Each row corresponds to a single data point, and each column represents a different feature.

Tableau interprets the type of data in each column. Each icon represents a different type of
data. For example, a number sign represents numerical data, while an abc represents string
data. A globe represents geographic data, and so on. Tableau has interpreted the first two
columns as geographic data, the third column as string data, and the last three columns as
numeric data.

All right, let's make a data viz that demonstrates the amount of CO2 emissions that come
from each country. To do this, choose the Sheet 1 tab. On the far left of the screen is a banner
with column names above a gray line. In Tableau, these are called the dimensions of the data.
Below this line are the different measures that you can track for these dimensions.

To create a chart that displays the CO2 emissions per country, we're going to start by double-
clicking the Country Name dimension. The main display will show a map of the countries on
the planet, with dots indicating which countries are represented in the data. The dots are all
the same size because, with no measure selected, Tableau defaults to scale each country
equally.

If you want to scale by CO2 emissions, we'll need to include a specific measure. Double-click
or drag and drop onto the sheet the measure CO2 Kilotons. This will change the size of the
dots to be proportional to the amount of CO2 emitted. Tableau has a wide selection of options
for depicting the measures for a given dimension. Most of these options are contained in the
middle column between the main display and the columns with dimensions and measures.

Now, let's customize the look of our chart to better communicate trends in the data. If we
drag and drop a measure on one of the marks—such as Color, Size, and Label—we can
change that aspect of the measure's visualization on the chart. For instance, say we want to
change the color of the CO2 measure. We would drag the measure CO2 Kilotons to the box
with the Color label. Then we can select this box to pull up a list of color options.

Feel free to pause this video and play around with the different options—get creative. If you
ever want to reverse a change that you make to a Tableau sheet, just use the back arrow.
There it is—we just created our first chart using Tableau.

But what if we wanted to change the dimensions or measures? Instead of visualizing the CO2
per country, maybe we want to chart the CO2 per capita per region. To do this, we could
double-click on the dimension Region and then do the same for the measure CO2 Per Capita.
This builds a new chart.

We can edit the title by hovering the cursor over the title box and clicking on the arrow to
bring up a drop-down menu. Then we'll choose Edit Title. Let's give it the name Global CO2
Emissions. Or, if we wanted to delete a chart, we could select the Clear Sheet button in the
toolbar. This will wipe out the chart and bring us back to an empty sheet.

Don't worry if you do this by accident or change your mind—the back button introduced
earlier will bring the chart back. To delete a sheet entirely, right-click on the sheet’s tab and
select Delete. We won't be able to delete a sheet if it's the only sheet in our file. But be
careful—unlike clearing a sheet, deleting a sheet altogether cannot be undone.
Make sure to save your progress by hovering over the File tab and selecting Publish As.
Congratulations, now you're ready to start visualizing your data. This is far from the end of
the story, though. Soon you will explore more advanced tools in Tableau.

Optimize color palette in data visualization

Hi there. In this video we'll take a closer look at effective and ineffective data visualizations
using Tableau. That's right. Even though this platform can help you create some really
beautiful visuals, all of those features and functions can lead to something that's just not very
useful too.

You might remember the five second rule we spoke about earlier. A sign of a good data
visualization is that once you show it to an audience, they should understand what you're
trying to convey within five seconds. This means it's clear, effective, and most importantly,
convincing. If you keep that rule of thumb in mind before you begin any Tableau Viz, you'll
be on the right path to creating good visuals.

Let's take a look at an example of a good use of a diverging color palette. A diverging color
palette displays two ranges of values using color intensity to show the magnitude of the
number and the actual color to show which range the number is from. It's a good way to show
the difference between numbers. Here, green is associated with higher numbers and red with
lower numbers.

You may come across tables like this as it relates to business metrics and KPIs. The colors
you choose should fit within the scope of the audience's expectations. While this might not
always be true globally, a lot of people associate green with positive and red with negative.
This makes things nice and clear.

Here's an ineffective data Viz example. There's a lot about this Viz that isn't working well,
but these colors are hard to read. This graph uses green and orange, and the data points are
really close together. These colors don't clearly show the difference between low and high
data points.
Data visualization allows us to share meaningful stories about data, but we can't do it if it's
too hard for the audience to understand the data Viz we're sharing. Using color pairings that
don't fit your audience's expectations could add another layer of unnecessary complexity.

Brace yourself, because there's another way to make an ineffective data visualization even
worse. If you add a few too many labels, you end up with a data visualization that's really
hard to take in. Doing this makes the visualization too busy. It takes up too much space and it
prevents the labels from being clearly shown. All of this is made worse by using different
fonts across the labels.

What we have here is good data turned bad because of the visuals. Having an interactive
visualization can be useful for both your audience and for you as the analyst. But just like
anything else, the more power you have, the more responsibility you have. Lose sight of the
qualities of a good viz, and you can lose control over the story you want the data to tell.

Now that you've learned how to use visual enhancements to your advantage, next up, we'll
check out ways you can get even more creative with them. Stay tuned.