An introduction to data analytics in New Zealand: A non-chef unveils his first dashboard in Tableau

I'm sharing some of the hands-on Tableau skills I learned at the QRC in New Zealand and the data visualization dashboards I created as a non-techie. I'm already over halfway through the 10-week course, so it's nothing special, but if you're like me and want to try your hand at data analytics in New Zealand, you should definitely check it out.

Introduction to data analytics in New Zealand

hello. I'm a While working as a chef in New Zealand, I learned that the I'm Daniel, studying data at Queenstown QRC School.

We're already well over halfway through the 10-week course. If you're curious about how I got into data analytics in New Zealand and the QRC School's Data Fundamentals course, I highly recommend reading the post below. It will give you a better understanding of the whole story

Within the past five weeks, we've published a series of articles on how to use Microsoft's Power BIand now we're learning another magical tool, Tableau.

Tableau Lessons Learned at QRC

The dashboard above is a dashboard I created in Tableau with data from libraries around the world. It's crude, but it shows how I used The first thing I created using Tableau. As I practiced publishing, it went up to an unfinished state.

Tableau is a platform that helps you analyze and visually represent (dashboard) dense numerical data in Excel and elsewhere. People understand reports more easily and digest them faster when they're viewed through a visualized dashboard like the one above, rather than just looking at numbers.

My experience with both Power BI and Tableau is that Power BI gives you a lot more freedom and space to be creative.

However, because Tableau provides a basic framework, I think it's easy for people with no artistic flair to create some pretty cool dashboards.

To put it simply, if Power BI is a blank slate, Tableau is a coloring book with pre-drawn lines.

If you're curious about dashboards built with Tableau, check out the Tableau Public websitefor more information. You can find them by searching for your field of interest.

1) Here's my first completed Tableau dashboard

A company wants to invest in mining, The best state for you among the different states of MexicoIt's a school project, and I'm still learning, so if you're working in the real world, I hope you find it cute.

My experience with data analysis in New Zealand is that data analysts are like storytellers: they take a bunch of stories (data) that are scattered all over the place, organize them, polish them, and visualize them in a way that people can understand.

It's like when I was a kid and I heard a story from my grandmother, and even though it was a story (sound), I could picture it so naturally in my head (visualization).

2) Power BI vs Tableau

I haven't been using either data visualization platform for very long, so I could be wrong in what I'm saying.

Power BI just tells a story by placing charts wherever I want them on the dashboard screen. Tableau, on the other hand, has tabs for sheet, dashboard, and story concepts. On a sheet, I put a chart that shows the answer to one question.

The Dashboard is what you see at once when multiple sheets are gathered together. The Story part is where you create a story by adding answers to the question of ‘why' (qualitative data) to the Dashboard that shows quantitative data (numbers).

The two Tableau screens you saw above are both part of a story.

Power BI vs Tableau

As I created the Library and Mexican Mining dashboards above in Tableau, I realized that I could just drag in the basic framework, but it was frustrating to have to do that for each dashboard to create each page of the story.

It was also cumbersome to have to go back to the Story after I was done with the Dashboard to make sure it worked.

In particular, I learned that if you designate a chart as a horizontal or vertical area before dragging it in, you can organize the entire dashboard with a cleaner feel.

3) How an AI tool improved my study efficiency by 200%

As always, it's hard to take English classes, but these days, I believe that with the right AI tools, you can overcome that hurdle.

In the post below, you can see how I'm following the Data fundamental class at QRC School, even though I don't speak much English.

Finalize

Today I've been talking about Tableau, which I'm learning as part of an introductory data analytics course in New Zealand. I got interested in data analytics because I love clean, well organized dashboards.

I started studying data because I always thought, "How can I create such a well organized dashboard?" and now I'm learning Power BI and Tableau to help me do that.

In New Zealand, the IT side of the business is in the MS ecosystem, so they prefer to use Power BI. I'm still more comfortable with Tableau, but I need to work harder to get better at utilizing both platforms.

There will be more data study updates in the future, so stay tuned if you're interested in studying data analytics.