How to learn Tableau?

Introduction

Too much data makes people confused and no one wants to look at too much data, there are reasons why people don’t prefer to look at too much data:

• Looking at too much data confuses people,
• Just looking at data does not tell any story like why something has happened,
• Just data never tells story whether the trend is increasing or decreasing,

So, to avoid such problems experts in industry came with idea of visualisation i.e. making beautiful line charts, bar charts, waterfall charts, funnels, multiple lines on same chart, bars inside bars, scatter plot, bubble charts etc.

Each chart has different usage for e.g.

• Line chart tells story how something is changing with time whether it is increasing or decreasing,
• Multiple lines on same chart shows comparison between two lines,
• Funnels shows how something came into the business and how that is maturing with time like
  • Lead maturity or
  • Customer conversion to paid after performing several steps and
  • How many users are at which stage and which stage is leading to problem in conversion etc.

So, i hope this is clear why visualisation of data is important.

What are the common job titles associated with Tableau?

No one wants to learn any new software just for fun and specially a technical software like tableau, obviously it is in hype because of it’s use in data analytics industry.

So, the next question that comes into mind is if i am learning tableau what kind of job i am going to get?

So, there are many job titles where the usage of tableau sort of is must for e.g.

• Business analyst,
• Tableau developer,
• Data analyst,
• Marketing analyst,
• Sales analyst,
• BI developer
• Analytics manager,
• BI analyst etc. and so on.

But, is the above list is very comprehensive – the answer is no, because the usage of skill is not bounded by any profile it is of use for anyone who wants to crunch data, visualise it and want to extract useful information.

Is coding required to learn Tableau?

This 21st century started with IT revolution and with covid a lot of things went online as offline business was not working.

And online business means requirement of people who know how to code. But making products using coding and using coding for data analytics are two different things.

But, yes if you know coding in python or querying in SQL then data analysis and insights generation becomes relevant easy for you.

So, although tableau do provide a lot of readymade drag and drop kind of functions but still it has very useful feature of creating your own calculated field where alot of readymade functions are available like count, countd based on some condition, if else logic etc. which makes it even more powerful.

So, using calculated field in tableau you can write logics like

IF value > 100 then ‘Good’ ELSEIF value > 200 then ‘Great’ END.

So, this is just one example you can write if-else logic based on multiple fields as well, which gives option to do even deeper analysis.

Now, as learning has no limit so just adding two links here from tableau’s website, why don’t you try it and learn something on your own:

• Tableau Logical Functions
• Multiple Else if in a calculated field – Tableau

In how many days one can learn Tableau?

Learning has no limit and likewise the pace with which one learns, but when it comes to learning tableau to the extent that one can prepare basic dashboards and start working on it.

So, idealism apart one can learn some simple basic Tableau techniques in one day if they are starting from zero.

Now when i am saying basic things i mean things like:

• Importing data to tableau using csv, excel, googlesheets, or some databases like postgres, redshift, snowflake etc.,
• Learning to create basic visualisations like line charts, bar charts, bubble charts, pivot tables etc.,
• Creating IF-ELSE logical fields etc.

But, my friends these are very basic stuff and tableau is much more than that.

But, something is better than nothing – so having some basic knowledge of a tool like tableau always adds credits to ones resume and you can always flaunt these skills during your interview.

Does company provide training in Tableau after joining?

Profitable MNC companies always want to hire and train good employees that can help them in long run.

So, yes some companies do provide training to employees after joining that include on-job training, offline classes in company or providing support for online certification.

But, again that depends from company to company and need of company.

But, even if this is not enough one can always go to tableau’s website and refer their courses, help videos etc. and can get started on tableau.

How can I become expert in Tableau?

There is no limit for knowledge and so do with Tableau as this software is evolving very fast and the team behind it is continuously working to make it better and remaining market leader.

So, just keep on learning new stuff in tableau and try to keep on solving more problems using Tableau, that way one can become expert in Tableau.

Learn about recent developments and new features addition. Go through their tutorials or video tutorials on youtube, their website etc.

But, there is no one place where you can learn everything.

Learning and implementing what you are learning to solve practical problems is the best way to become expert in Tableau.

Why Tableau is associated with Data Visualization?

Softwares main purpose is to make life easier for it’s users and so considering that Tableau is associated with visualisation, because they allow analysts to create beautiful graphs, charts, trend lines etc. using tableau rather than just presenting data in table formats that don’t show any patterns or trends. Hence, that is why it is associated with data visualisation.

What is data visualization?

Art of presenting data using beautiful trend lines, bar charts, waterfalls etc. so that even a non-analyst can understand it easily.

Looking at too much data is not possible for business leaders in industry considering their busy schedule and hence it is always advisable to present clean easy to understand charts to them rather than dumping data on them.

Benefits of Data visualization:

Revealing eye-opening business insights quickly, the impact of which is quick and effective business decisions making,

Makes people more confident about the decision their taking,

It’s difficult to remember data and too much text or numerical information, but it’s quite easy to remember the trend. So, this is yet another benefit of this.

Why data data visualization is very important now-a-days?

With IT revolution every business is getting huge amount of data on daily basis and so comes the need to crunch and present that data to understand business and customers well. Apart from it the benefits mentioned in sections above are other reasons why data visualisation is important.

What are some of the competitors of Tableau?

Some of the competitors of tableau are: Looker, PowerBI, Qlikview, Domo, zoho, SAP, segment, amplitude, google analytics etc.

So, whatever data software you will talk abut they are in the process of making their own data visualization tool or have already created one.

Reason why Tableau is quite famous?

Tableau is quite powerful tool because it’s easy to use, very reliable, works good even with huge amount of data, too many open sources available to learn tableau like video tutorials, text articles both free as well as paid and what not.

Because of above mentioned reasons Tableau is quite famous.

Tableau’s free version:

To learn tableau first download it’s free version from Tableau’s website. When you will go on Tableau’s website to download it’s aoftware you will see many version just download any one of them and start installing that on your computer.

It’s free version is available for a trial period of around 2 weeks.

Pricing of Tableau software:

Earlier it was possible to purchase tableau software directly from their website but now one has to contact their sales to get to know about pricing.

• Refer this tableau pricing link for getting idea about pricing.

Conclusion:

SO, hope we were able to explain tableau in good manner. Let us know what you think about our article and what else we can do for you to improve your knowledge.