Hello Reader,

Happy April! I hope you had a good start to the month.

Here are the data tidbits for this week.

Tableau Tip - LOD Cheat Sheet

When working with LODs, consider creating simple worksheets to serve as a simple cheat sheet for constructing your expression.

For example, if you want to have the number of orders per customer, create a simple worksheet with this.

Once you have verified these are the numbers you need, you can compose your LOD.

Since your worksheet has most of the necessary components, you can even drag and drop the pills onto your calculated field editor.

Do you need data sources?

If you’re building up your portfolio and need some data sources for practice and personal projects, you can consider the following:

Kaggle

Kaggle is a machine learning and data science community with over a million members. Don’t worry, while Kaggle sounds like haggle, you’re not going to have to haggle for data. Once you sign up for an account, the data sets are free to use for learning. Make sure to check out competitions — you can gain not only confidence and bragging rights but also monetary prizes.

Link: https://www.kaggle.com/​

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Tableau Public Resources

If you go to public.tableau.com, you will find a myriad of curated data sources to explore. Under Learn > Sample Data, you will see data sets - from Sports to Public Data to Education and more.

Link: https://public.tableau.com/app/learn/sample-data​

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Makeover Monday

Makeover Monday is a long standing social visualization project started by Andy Kriebel (Tableau Visionary, Hall of Fame) and Eva Murray (multi-year Tableau Zen Master) in 2016.

The goal was to provide a data source for others to visualize, interpret, and put their spin on. It has greatly helped in opening up how the same data set can be interpreted in different ways. It also sparks conversations and creativity among many participants.

While Makeover Monday is currently in an infinite hiatus, the data sources are still available.

Link: https://makeovermonday.co.uk/​

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RWFD - Real World Fake Data

One of the challenges with personal projects is that we often get data sets that are not reflective of “real-life” data sets in different verticals.

#RWFD — or Real World Fake Data — is the brainchild of Mark Bradbourne and the inspiration is drawn from MakeoverMonday.

This provides a real opportunity for many to have a peek at the types of data we can expect in different industries and sectors — Human Resources (HR), Insurance, Healthcare, Help Desk, Social Media, and Education, to name some.

Link: https://sonsofhierarchies.com/real-world-fake-data/​

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Mockaroo - for more realistic data sets

Sometimes, we just need more realistic data sets that mimic the structure we use at work or in our projects.

If you need to create your own data set using your own fields but with fake data, you can use a service like Mockaroo. The free tier allows you to download 1,000 records at a time (which you can do multiple times).

What’s more, they’ve added a few more functionalities that make it easier to get your desired sample data set.

There is a chatbot that gives you instructions on creating your desired data set.

Alternatively, if you have a sample set of records, you can feed it to Mockaroo's "Create Schema from Example Data" feature, and it will generate the structure you.

Link: https://www.mockaroo.com/​

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That's a wrap!

That's it for this week. More to come in the coming weeks. In addition to Tableau and Data Viz tips, I have a few tool and book spotlights on the way.

I am excited to share many of the things I am discovering with you. I appreciate your time and support.

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Until next time,

Donabel