Since our office got us both the Tableau and Power BI license, it is up to us to incorporate these data visualization tools in our analytical work. It takes a while to figure out how to perform particular tasks in both Tableau and Power BI, though the learning curve for Tableau is steeper, but once you figure out a way to accomplish what you suppose to do with the software, the efficiency and the output are quite amazing.
The Good
- Perfect for presentation. Able to define the Size of the Dashboard to optimize the presentation results. For example, we can define the dashboard size to 1550 x768 for the wide screen presentation.
- Easy to define data hierarchy. Once defined, the list result of the fields in the low hierarchy in the Filters pane will just show the filtered results determined by the fields in the higher hierarchy in the Filters pane. Details see example: Hierarchical Filter.
- Abundant data connections. Able to link directly to statistical files, including SAS, SPSS, and R. Especially SAS dataset is the basic type of data that we maintain and update for all the reporting function. Tableau can also read different type of spatial files which is super convenient. Details see example of loading Census Shape Data.
- Tableau prep can recognize tables in the PDF documents and combine different PDF tables into one data table. Details see example: Extract and Union Join Tables in PDF.
The Bad
- The Individual visual has to be set up in each Worksheet tab first and then combined into Dashboard tab. It is kind of inefficient in terms of using the Worksheet/Dashboard/Story tab spaces, comparing to Power BI that you can directly create different visuals in one canvas.
- Not able to union the datasets from multiple data sources in Tableau Desktop. You can only union datasheets in the same workbook, or files with similar names under same folder. The tables need to have the same number of fields with same field names and data type.
- The name for the data connection doesn’t automatically update when you change the data source to a different spreadsheet. Have to use “Rename …” to manually change the name of the data connection.
The In-between
- Sometimes it is not easy to understand what certain menu items are doing to the visualization, or where to click to change a particular aspect of the visual. eg. font size for title, label and legend; remove lines on the visual; show/hide title, label, legend, and axis etc.
The Particular
- Ratio calculation: Need to understand the LOD expression to properly use the Fixed function and Include function. See example for ratio calculation using Fixed function.
- Alias:
- Set:
- Entire View:
- Size vs Angle:
- Dual Axis: