As a learning experiment I wanted to see if I could get Tableau to work as a basic graphics calculator. While mostly for fun, some of the techniques are quite useful for interpolation of sparse data. I had been playing with making Tableau generate interim points for creating a Sankey chart of the general election…
A question came up in one of our internal training sessions on Tableau. Mapping the question into the usual Superstore sample in Tableau, we wanted to create a table of the top 5 customers by total sales within a specified month and showing the percentage of the total sales they accounted for in that month.…
Having been looking forward to the Web Data Connector from the announcement at last years Tableau conference, I am currently enjoying trying out the Beta. With just some simple JavaScript you can wrap any web data into something directly accessible from the Data connections tab within Tableau. Starting with something I am familiar with, I thought…
Following on from another post on downloading Quandl into Tableau via Python and the Data Extract API, I wanted to try downloading the current components of the FTSE 100, and then for each one download the history of prices using Alteryx. Yahoo! finance has a web page with the members of the index: The list…
One of the most common data file formats I have to deal with is CSV files. Assuming your file is well formed (i.e. starts in the top row, with or without a header, in a nice continuous table), then there is no difficulty. Drag the file into Alteryx’s designer and it will create an Input…
While I had planned to write about CSV parsing next, I decided to cover a couple of other topics first. I plan to carry on and write about my experience parsing CSVs and then reuse via Macros and Formula Add Ons after that. Firstly an improvement to the last post, based on a comment from…
I have been spending a fair amount of my time at work using Alteryx Designer. It is a nice ETL tool and is a great tool for use along side Tableau. I have found myself using it as a proof of concept for a data flow before transitioning back to my traditional Visual Studio C#…
I tend to find myself prototyping tools for our users within Excel, by far and away their favourite tool. I have a nice little wrapper for exposing C# functions as Worksheet functions and a slowly growing universe of VBA snippets for making automation and creation of these workbooks quickly. Most of the time these spread…
I’ve been using the Surface Pro 2 since it came out and my work just upgraded me to the 3. It is a fantastic laptop replacement capable of being my one and only device (from tablet to development box). Battery life and weight are awesome. The screen and display are a joy to work on,…
A couple of silly little tricks, but ones I find useful. Far too often I end up trying to decode a complicated Excel formula and wanting to make it easier to read and leave comments behind. The tricks below work in Excel 2010 and 2013. I don’t use 2007 any more but expect they would…
James Dunkerley's Blog 