The Jump Plot Variety

In ma previous post, Creating Jump Plot, we used Bézier function for drawing the curves. But Bézier curve is not the sole option.

Today, we would like to show you how to use the familiar Sine function and Triangular function for drawing those curves. I got the inspiration from a viz of Sebastián Soto Vera. Check it out, it is a great use case of jump plot.

We will use the same data set as in my last post. To make it simple, we will only focus on contiguous sequences, which go through all the check points. This will make the calculations a lot simpler.

Simplified Steps
-Densification sill the same based on the Sequence
-[t simple], of values between 0 and 1, is an index between 2 check points

[t simple] = (Index()-1)%100/100

-X coordinates will be Index()
-Y is the measure, which has to be available at each densified points.

Now all the variety of jump plot differentiate by the way we calculate Y:

Sine Jump Plot

Circular/Elliptic Jump Plot

Triangular Jump Plot

Bézier Jump Plot

Here are the resulting charts:

You see, there can be more other functions for creating a jump plot. You may replace the above by your favorite sexy curves. Click the above image to access the viz.

(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.)

Jake and I collaborated on a dashboard. He told me that he learnt a way to create an in-place help page in Tableau. He first saw it at a conference somewhere and couldn't recall who the speaker was. So I am blogging here about it but the credit goes to somebody else. If anyone knows who the original creator is, leave a comment below.

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.

Add a comment

Vizible Difference

In search of data visualization excellence

1. Sheet with a single data mark.

2. Create an show/hide button

3. Add annotations

Add a comment