It’s that time of year; the season of giving to others, sharing with family and rejoicing over the many gifts the #datafam has bestowed upon the community throughout the year.
This year at TC19, Ken Flerlage, Zen Master and Kevin Flerlage, Tableau Ambassador gave the gift of understanding trigonometry in Tableau. I know TRIG; most people’s arch enemy! In their TC19 Presentation Zen Master: The “Tableau Twins” Take You Beyond Show Me, Ken and Kevin walk us though some of the most advanced charts and how trigonometry is used build those eye catching Sankey and Radial charts.
If you are like me, you might have downloaded a workbook with a radial chart studied the calculations of radius and cos only to realize you don’t remember much about high school trigonometry to figure out what the calculations are doing. You might turn to google, watch a a few Kahn Academy videos to refresh your memory but abandon the idea cause Kahn Academy doesn’t explain how that works in Tableau. Well no need to search any further, Ken and Kevin got you covered.
In this session Ken starts off by explaining that you can plot anything with X and Y coordinates in Tableau. Using these coordinates Ken demonstrates how he built the Periodical chart in Tableau and eventually created various Art with plotting dots.
With that foundation, Kevin guides us through the fundamentals of creating a radial chart by duplicating the data, table calculations, path card and what we need to know about triangle math. His explanation and demonstration of each step on how to build the radial chart and understanding of the calculations is superb. He tops this off by explaining the Radar Chart in Tableau.
Ken follows suit with the Sankey Chart. He explains in an easy to understand manner how to use data densification, Cartesian joins and table calculations to create lines. With enough points plotted, we eventually have curves in Tableau. Ken has developed many templates to create your own Sankey charts which can be found on the brothers newest website https://www.flerlagetwins.com/
For my #data19challenge, I highly recommend watching their TC19 session. You can find their blog and a link to their presentation here https://www.flerlagetwins.com/2019/11/ShowMe2019.html
Kevin and Ken, a sincere thank you for the gift of explaining trigonometry in a way that was easy to understand. Thank you for the countless hours you dedicate to the Tableau community through your blog posts, templates, design recommendations and volunteerism. I wish you a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.