Game of Life in Tableau

Just heard the news that Professor John Conway has succumbed to COVID-19. Really sorry to hear that. John is the inventor of the Game of Life which has a huge influence in computer science. I would like to dedicate this implementation of Game of Life in Tableau to him, a great mathematician and educator! RIP

Last year, I decided to give the Game of Life a run in Tableau, after a few earlier projects in cellular automata. It took me awhile to get all the logic right. In the process, I have written probably one of the most complex Tableau formula of my life. But I enjoyed every bit of it.

Yes, we can do it in Tableau and here is the workbook.

There is no play button for it because it's not based on paging. We can play it only one step at a time via the slider. Hope that Tableau can play it automatically in the future!

RIP, Professor Conway! Your legacy will stay alive for a very long time.

(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.

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1. Sheet with a single data mark.

2. Create an show/hide button

3. Add annotations

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