Andy Cotgreave
Oxford
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Articles by Andy Cotgreave
How Tableau Features the Power of Data and Generative AI at Gartner BI Bake-Off
I presented at the Gartner Data and Analytics Summit 2024 in Orlando, participating in the Analytics and BI Bake-Off event. It was an honor to demonstrate Tableau’s capabilities in four categories: Data Management, Analysis/Content Creation, Sharing/Collaboration, and Cool Innovation. This year’s Bake-Off topic was about overcoming poverty and how to make the world a better place.
The Definitive Data Glossary for Business Leaders
Here’s a stat that might blow your mind: 90% of the world’s data was created in just the last two years. With this much data moving through your organization, you’ll need to empower everyone, not just the data experts. Artificial intelligence (AI) will help help teams fish business insights from oceans of information, but to learn and improve decision-making, AI in turn requires data.
What is Tableau’s Iron Viz?
Iron Viz is the world’s largest data visualization competition, where every year, three contestants take center stage in front of a global audience and deliver a compelling and awe-inspiring story visualizing the same data set in 20 minutes. The beginning of Iron Viz Based on the world-renowned Iron Chef cooking show, Iron Viz started as a Tableau Conference 2011 breakout session with 300 people in attendance.
No One Understands Your Charts — Here's How To Change That
Charts are the language of business, used every day at all levels to convey information. But too often, they’re an incomprehensible mashup of pies, bars, gauges, dots and lines that leaves the reader no more informed about the topic at hand. The good news is it’s almost certainly not your fault — it’s the charts themselves.
Literacy Skills Gap
The G20 context, 2022 The G20 is hosted in Indonesia this year. It has not been an easy year for travel, and the Indonesian presidency…
Why closing the UK’s data literacy gap is key to future global success – FE News
As the world we live and work in becomes increasingly digitised, the need for data literate employees is greater than ever before. Gartner defines data literacy as the ability to read, write and communicate data in context, including an understanding of data sources and constructs, analytical methods and techniques applied. For those with high levels of data literacy, the number of opportunities and career paths available to them is growing all the time.
Close the Gap
As the world we live and work in becomes increasingly digitised, the need for data literate employees is greater than ever before. Gartner defines data…
6 tips for creating charts for social media
These days we’re as likely to be sharing data on social media as we are on a dashboard, an interactive data story or a slide. Our media consumption is now faster than ever, so if you’re going to use Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook or TikTok—you need a new set of design choices. And the ones you used to build good dashboards might not apply. How, then, should you design for social media? With all visualizations, you must first consider the goal.
My favourite data books of the year
Hello and welcome to the data zeitgeist! This time: my favourite data-related books from this year. Have you read these? What were your favourite books of the year? Atlas of the Invisible (James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti) "Atlas of the Invisible is an ode to the unseen, to a world of information that cannot be conveyed through text or numbers alone." This is a sumptuous book to browse or, as I did, devour cover-to-cover. It's not just that its topics are diverse and important.
Trump's literacy, KPIs and Citizen Data: final lessons from covid-19 charts
Hello! This is my final set of reflections after a year of covid-19 charts. You can see parts one and two, and do let me know what you think on Twitter or LinkedIn. Data-informed conversation requires data literacy skills (Donald Trump’s Axios interview, August 2020) In an interview with Jonathan Swan of Axios, Donald Trump used printed charts to argue that covid-19 was not as bad as the media reported. To my mind the exchange revealed two fundamental data literacy failures.
3 more lessons from the charts of covid-19
Welcome to Sweet Spot #59. Last time I looked at 3 data visualizations from early in the covid-19 pandemic. This month, I’m looking at how things continued from April onwards, and what we can learn from them. Use proxy data; complex metrics need slow introductions The Economist excess mortality charts, April 2020 By April we knew that accurately counting covid-19 deaths was problematic. Undercounting risked downplaying the situation and made comparing countries difficult.
Best of the Tableau Web: December from What's New
Happy New Year! Welcome to another year of reviewing the Best of the Tableau Web (BOTW). Can you believe we’re entering the 10th year of this blog series? I personally want to thank every person who shared a tip, detailed technique, analytics that inspired them, or some wacky piece of data art. The Tableau ecosystem has significantly grown in the last decade, and I still enjoy seeing what new ideas are created every month, plus get excited thinking about what may come in the future.
After 12 months of covid-19 charts, what have we learnt? (Sweet Spot #58)
Welcome to the Sweet Spot – 3 data-related stories to read/watch/listen to. If you’d like to subscribe, click here. As we roll-through multiple covid-19 anniversaries, I’m going to spend the next 3 Sweet Spot posts looking back at the charts that defined the pandemic and, for each one, what they tell us about data communication. For each chart, I’ll explain how it demonstrates a challenge all data-informed organisations face.
Best of the Tableau Web: November from What's New
Hello everyone and welcome to the latest round up of the Tableau community highlights. I was reminded this month of how important “success” in analytics is about much more than one’s skills in the platform. This month, as always, the community has shared many super tips and tricks to improve your ability to master Tableau, but there has been a great set of posts on all the other career development “stuff” that you mustn’t ignore if you want to succeed.
storytelling with data: #1 the art of feedback
Rid your world of ineffective graphs and mediocre presentations, one exploding 3D pie chart at a time! The storytelling with data podcast from bestselling author, speaker and workshop guru, Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic covers topics related to data storytelling, better presentations, and all things data viz. There is a story in your data—get the skills and power to tell it!
World Statistics Day: The search and need for trusted data from What's New
4 min read Kristin Adderson December 2, 2020 – 1:46am December 2, 2020 Editor’s note: A version of this article originally appeared in Information Age. This year’s UN World Statistics Day theme of “connecting the world with data we can trust” feels particularly timely. The global pandemic has put data at the heart of how the public is informed and persuaded to change behaviors.
#ElectionViz: US TV networks have room for data storytelling improvement from What's New
Editor’s note: A version of this blog post originally appeared in Nightingale, a publication by the Data Visualization Society. How was US general election night for you? For me, it was underwhelming. That emotion had nothing to do with the political story, but everything to do with the data storytelling of US TV networks. My goal on election night was to enjoy and comment on the way they told data stories, which you can find on Twitter under #ElectionViz. I came away disappointed.
Best of the Tableau Web: Learnings from TC(ish) and Iron Viz from What's New
Phew! It’s November. Welcome back to Best of the Tableau Web, where I share some of the best community content I’ve seen in recent times. And since we’re right on the heels of our first ever virtual Tableau Conference(ish), there’s a lot to highlight! For this segment, three themes come to mind. First: Iron Viz is the ultimate data competition and it was a privilege to host this event with Keshia Rose again. Going virtual this year presented challenges, but also many new opportunities.
Five things data storytellers can learn from 2020 US election poll trackers from What's New
7 min read Tanna Solberg October 28, 2020 – 9:19pm October 30, 2020 In the latest episode of Chart Chat, Amanda Makulec, Steve Wexler, Jeff Shaffer and I discussed the lessons data storytellers can learn from 2020 US election poll trackers. Below are my five main takeaways that you can apply in your own analyses. To get the details, watch the full episode of Chart Chat.
You are (almost definitely) not qualified to make predictions about COVID-19. We’re here to help explain why.
Tableau, along with many other analytics platforms, has a built in forecasting tool. With just one click, you can add a forecast to your time series charts. If you’ve been exploring data about COVID19, you might be tempted to use that feature to look at the trajectory of COVID-19 cases and deaths. But if you do, should you publish what you find? To help you decide, I’ve created a list of prerequisites.
Visualizing COVID-19: A discussion on the “flatten the curve” visualization and responsible data use
Amanda then discussed what the curve will really look like as countries adapt their testing and mitigation strategies. She described how the curve chart is helping bridge the gap between those people who work with data every data and those with little to no data knowledge. One amazing example is the animated model of “simulitis” by Harry Stevens on The Washington Post. This is the most viewed article on WaPo’s online site, ever.
Tableau is going to be working with The Guardian's Data Store
Tableau is going to be working with The Guardian's Data Store
"The acme of graphic work"
You think you work hard tweaking your d3 code? Spend a lot of time formatting stuff in Tableau to get it just right? How about this: This approach is described by Brinton as “the acme of graphic work when there are two independent variables.” How to build this? Simple. All you need is plyboard, wires, plaster of Paris, sandpaper, and a lot of patience.
Piano wires, maps, and Excel Power Map
When you make a map, you can put a pin in it to show a location. What if you’re trying to show a measure at each point, eg Sales by City? I’d suggest drawing a bigger/smaller circle. Here’s a good example by Andy Kriebel showing Vaccine-Preventable Outbreaks. In 1914, Brinton would take you into the third dimension. The chart above shows where Harvard graduates live, 7 years after graduation. How do you do that kind of thing? Simple: Get some piano wire. Heat it in a gas flame to stiffen it.
Best of the Tableau web: Data culture and business transformation
Hello, Tableau community! Welcome to my monthly round up of the best content being produced by you, the Tableau community. Recently, I’ve noticed the emergence of people blogging about data culture and business transformation. Annabelle Rincon has been a long-time Tableau user, and recently started a new role heading up a Centre of Excellence at Vontabel. Her post about the beginning of this role is enlightening. The big question she asks herself is: should I be running a Centre of Enablement?
COVID-19 resources: Data viz best practices
In times of uncertainty such as the one we’re in now with the COVID-19 outbreak, what people want are facts and information. Often, that means data. But as we think about how to get data into the hands of people who need it, it’s worth thinking about how we do so, and what it looks like. I recently published a reminder of how the choices we make when we do data visualization—especially on a critical subject like the COVID-19 outbreak—influence how people see, understand, and react to the data.
During the coronavirus outbreak, should we change the data visualization rules?
Alice Casey raises an interesting point about a chart about coronavirus (“What are the chances of dying? from the BBC): Please change the scale on this #coronavirus infographic @BBCNews it makes it look far worse than it is. We need context and should see 100% on the horizontal axis not 15% it looks more alarming than it is cc @HetanShah @bengoldacre @LydNicholas pic.twitter.com/6J0A9ulILc — Alice Casey (@cased) March 2, 2020 What’s the problem? It’s that the bar extends all the way to the right.
Best of the Tableau Web: New features and growth opportunities
It’s February and it’s Valentine’s Day, so here are the blogs I loved in January. Yes, that is one of the cheesiest opening lines I’ve written for this series! I remain unapologetic. The content team asked for something Valentine-themed and that’s the best I have. :-) This month, I’ve seen some great posts on animations. Did you know our next release of Tableau Desktop has animations?
So gestalten Sie ein aussagekräftiges Dashboard
Der Schlüssel zum Aufbau einer datengetriebenen Unternehmenskultur liegt in der Verbindung von Selfservice-Analytics und ansprechenden Visualisierungen. Interaktive Dashboards sind hervorragende Werkzeuge, um Erkenntnisse aus Daten zu ziehen und miteinander zu teilen. Um damit möglichst erfolgreich zu sein, sollten Datenanalysten einige Kriterien bei ihrem Dashboard-Design beachten.
How do you visualize Exit Poll accuracy?
My last post was about opinion poll tracking. Well: today is election day, and we’re all excited to see the results of the Exit Poll. I’ve seen two charts today explaining how accurate the Exit Polls are. One is from Statista and the other from The Economist. Here’s the one from Statista (I found it in Imran Khan’s tweet here.
A #dataviz review of the UK Election Poll trackers
We’re one week away and, as ever, all the media outlets have an election poll tracker. How do they stack up? Do they mislead? Do they adhere to good practice? Do they communicate well with their audience? What can we, as data analysts, learn from these? Today I’m taking a look at 5 trackers from across the media and political spectrum. Overall, there’s lots to like. I didn’t find any egregious visualization crimes.
Best of the Tableau Web: A look back at TC, the Community, and a fond farewell
Hello and welcome to the final Best of the Tableau Web of 2019. What a year, and what a bumper post I have for you this time—two months for the price of one! You might have noticed I missed last month’s post: Tableau Conference swallowed me whole. I loved connecting with everyone and I did get to host Iron Viz though, so the time spent preparing, and losing my voice, was worthwhile. All three contestants did incredible jobs, creating impressive visualizations that told unique stories.
How to build a Bar Chart Race in Tableau (using the new animations features)
Yes, yes, my previous post was a Bar Chart Race bashing post. As I said in that post, my negative opinions are tongue-in-cheek. I *do* think they’re a fad, but I do know they make compelling data stories, especially for the non-expert data visualization crowd. Right now, Tableau’s new animated transitions are available to test in beta. This provides many new opportunities, one of which is to build a Bar Chart Race.
Why Reddit's moratorium on Bar Chart Races is a good thing
Here’s my reasons why Bar Chart Races are a fad, and Reddit’s moratorium on them is a good thing. Ahem – note that this might be slightly tongue in cheek! If you want to counter this with arguments such as the following, I may struggle to counter back: But Andy, they are a compelling way of showing data to lay people who don’t find line charts engaging.
Comets are in the news. How about in dataviz?
The Rosetta is about to attempt to land on a comet. This is astonishing and exciting. Here’s some incredible photos of the comet on the New York Times. In honour of this event, here’s a post about comet charts: If only I’d gone vertical and not stayed with horizontal. I saw this tweet today: Super work by Zan Armstrong on mix effects and Simpsons Paradox with “comet charts” for change #ieeevis pic.twitter.com/3jNkOcMKXP — Lynn Cherny (@arnicas) November 12, 2014 “Comet chart”? But… But…. But….
Beware bad data in the UK General Election!
.@SophyRidgeSky challenges Lib Dem leader @joswinson on some of the party's campaign literature which some have accused of being misleading. Follow the day's political news live here: https://t.co/CF1pdcTrBh pic.twitter.com/qGKw8QG0BT — Sophy Ridge on Sunday (@RidgeOnSunday) November 3, 2019 The UK General Election campaign has officially kicked off. Once again, we face five weeks of data manipulation, deception, and bloopers. Perhaps naively, here are two hopes for the coming weeks.
Honoring Kelly Martin | Zen Master Hall of Fame
Tableau is immensely proud to be part of the most vibrant technology community on the planet. Our #DataFam amazes us every day. We are forever indebted to the early community pioneers who set the tone and led by example. One of those people was Kelly Martin, who passed away recently after living with cancer since 2016. The outpouring of support and affection for Kelly is a wonderful representation of the impact she had.
Best of the Tableau Web: Resources for learning and iterating
Hello and welcome to your monthly round-up of what the Tableau community wrote about in September. For many, it’s a new academic year, and it seems that this month there have been lots of great posts about learning and iterating. I’m really enjoying Christine Rietmann’s posts about her journey to becoming a certified Tableau Desktop Specialist.
Historical data visualisations at Princeton, part 3: Chart of Biography
This is the final post about the wonders of my visit to Princeton to see some of the best examples in the history of data visualization. In my first post, I covered DuBourg’s 1753 Charte Chronographique. Part 2 looked at Priestley’s 1765 Chart of History. In this final post, the climax of the visit was when the Chart of Biography was also brought to the table. This visit had surpassed any expectation I could possibly have had.
Historical data visualisations at Princeton, part 1: DuBourg
Two weeks ago, I checked off one of my long-standing bucket list items. Ever since discovering the wonderful history of data visualization, I have wanted to see the only known surviving “Carte Chronographique”, created by Jacques Barbeu DuBourg in 1753. This “machine” contains an 18 metre chart depicting the entire 4000 yr (biblical) history of the world. It is the first example of someone putting a continuous, uniform, unbroken time scale on an x-axis. This is hugely profound.
Historical data visualisations at Princeton, part 2: Priestley's Chart of History
In my previous post, I shared how I’d found myself at Princeton university, with Steve Wexler and RJ Andrews, to look at Jacque Barbeu DuBourg’s 1753 Carte Chronographique. Seeing that alone was an incredible experience. It turned out they also had copies of Joseph Priestley’s Charts of Biography and History. These are two other hugely influential charts created in 1765. I talk about them all the time in my talks on visualizing time.
What are the 30 most important Tableau and dataviz resources?
The amazing Juice Analytics list that jump-started my career Thirteen years ago, I was a Tableau and dataviz beginner. The world of preattentive attributes, storytelling and blue/green pills was all ahead of me. One of the most inspiring things I used to start my journey was Juice Analytic’s 30 Days to DataViz. It’s since been updated to a 30 Days to Storytelling and is, hands down, one of the best resources I had to start my journey with.
Best of the Tableau Web: Developing your Tableau skills
Welcome to my August review of the best blogs and podcasts shared by the Tableau community. Sometimes people say they don’t know how to get started or that they find some content intimidating. I understand that sentiment—the Iron Viz entries showcase people with very impressive skills. But you shouldn’t be intimidated; everyone entering Iron Viz was a beginner once. The hardest step is the first one. Fortunately, our community is wonderful at helping out beginners.
Best of the Tableau Web: Starting a blog
Welcome to the Best of the Tableau Web for July 2019. As always, I’ve enjoyed the excellent mix of great visualization tips (such as Klaus Schulte’s ideas about encoding change over time), data preparation tips (such as Eric Parker’s post on removing duplicate records in Tableau Prep), and articles about changing the culture in your organization (Kris Curtis on Just Eat). Klaus, Eric, Kris, and many others, have been blogging for some time.
5 questions to ask when designing a mobile dashboard
This year, I have a goal to walk or run 1000 miles. It’s part of the #Walk1000Miles community, run by Country Walking magazine. And of course, I wanted to track my progress with Strava and Tableau. [Before we continue, a quick note on distance units. As a proud European, I measure my exercise in kilometers, so that’s why everything’s calibrated to the number 1609 km, the metric equivalent of 1000 miles.
Don’t let data clichés hold back progress
However, I can hear your groans about what has become one of those data clichés that plague our profession. To satisfy any bloodlust against this one, you can read some comprehensive demolitions of how data isn’t the new oil from data scientists and others. Searching for the lost data archipelago Our industry is, alas, very good at creating clichés that give birth to yet more clichés. The data warehouse gave birth to the data lake, for example. So, what’s next? Here’s a game to play.
5 questions to ask when designing a mobile dashboard
My project tracker: mobile and desktop This year, I have a goal to walk or run 1000 miles. It’s part of the #Walk1000Miles community run by Country Walking magazine. Tracking my progress with Strava and Tableau is a vital part of the fun for me. [Before we continue, a quick note on distance units. As a proud European I measure my exercise in km, so that’s why everything’s calibrated to the number 1609km, the metric equivalent of 1000miles.
DataPlusMusic: finding long lost bands
This is the final post in my DataPlusMusic series: I hope you’ve enjoyed the series and are inspired to find out more about your own listening habits. In this post, I’m sharing a viz I use to look for old favourite bands that I’ve stopped listening to. The viz is a little complicated, so let me explain it. Each dot is an artist. It’s position shows when I first and last listened to them. The size shows how much I’ve listened to them.
DataPlusMusic: what's the impact of all these biopics and musicals?
In my previous post, I wrote about binge listening. In this post, I’m focusing on Queen, Elton John and The Beatles. In the last 12 months, we’ve had the biopics Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman, along with the romcom/musical Yesterday. They’re all fantastic. I’m intrigued about the impact on the revenue these movies generate for the artists and their estates. I can only really quantify my own listens.
Best of the Tableau Web: New variations for lines, slopes, and parameter actions
Welcome to the Best of the Tableau Web! To keep you going for another month, here are more tips, tricks, and inspiration. Iteration of ideas is crucial to any field, and visual analytics is another. One post I want to highlight this month is “Evolution and Variation with ‘line and slope’ charts in Tableau” by Dorian Banutoiu. It epitomizes everything I look for when reading our community content. First of all, Dorian is trying out new ideas, such as combining slopes and lines.
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