Sorting data is always a must for presenting information. Data in disorder is of little value. Especially for data analysts, part of our added value is to put data in order.
Sort by what? In what order?
There are various dimensions to order by. Among them all, the most important sorting is Sort by quantity in descending order.
This is the most preferred sorting order in any case, if no specific direction is given.
The Viz of the Day on baby names on 8/4/2016 is a great visual analysis on the trend of baby names. I especially like:
1.The diversity trend chart using distinct count of baby names.
2.The correlation or causality study between mediatic events and baby naming.
The tweaks I would do are:
1. In the lower part of the 3rd slide, I would sort the bars by the # of years descendingly, instead of by the alphabetic order of the names.
After sorting by the # of years:
This way we see easily which names are the most popular.
2.Each bar is built by stacking up a number of data marks over the years. The latest years are on the left. I would sort the years from left to right in an ascending order, which is the convention.
A little sort can make a big difference, much more effective than lots of bells and whistles. Always sort your data. That's what I would emphasize today.
(Refresh the page if you want to view the gif image multiple times. Or go to Tableau Public and click the button at the top-right corner.)
The key idea is to float a semi transparent worksheet on top of the dashboard, where a help text box is strategically placed on top of each chart. This way, we can explain how to view each chart and what data points are important, etc. This worksheet is collapsible by a show/hide button.
Below I would like to show how this worksheet can be constructed.
1. Sheet with a single data mark.
- Double click the empty space in Marks panel and add two single quotes. Make the null pill a text label. This creates a single null mark.
- Set the view as "Entire View"
2. Create an show/hide button
- Go to the target dashboard
- Drag a floating vertical container to the dashboard, making it cover all the area of interest.
- Drag the Single Null Mark sheet and drop it into the above container. Hide the sheet title.
- Create an open/close button for the container and place the button at the top-right corner.
3. Add annotations
- Format the sheet background opacity as 70% in the layout manager
- Select area annotations and place them anywhere of interest.
- Write help text and format it to highlight important messages.
- The text can serve as functional guide and/or insight guide.
Here is an example. Feel free to download the workbook and explore. Click the "i" button at the top-right corner to view the in-place help.
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