Document Type

Syllabus

Publication Date

Spring 2024

Course Description

The overarching goal of the course is to learn how to make meaningful graphics in Tableau. Along the way, you’ll improve your understanding of graphical representations of data in general, and you’ll also learn some of the auxiliary skills that are often required when dealing with real-world data (such as data cleaning, reshaping, and joining, for example). Finally, you will learn to assess the reliability of the data you are using and grapple with some of the ethical issues that arise as you make decisions about how to construct graphics based on that data.

Our plan is to learn Tableau primarily via case studies. We will use a few artificial examples to illustrate specific techniques and concepts, but most of our examples will come from real- world data, which means that there will be many complications to deal with–missing values, inappropriate data shape, data type mismatches, etc. Don’t expect these case studies to be easy. Most of them will require many failures before you get the result you want. If you’ve tried 10 di↵erent approaches and nothing has worked, rest assured that it probably took me 20 tries to get what I wanted.

This class will be highly interactive. I expect all students to participate during class time. On many class days, you will have time to work on activities and/or homework. In many cases, you will work together in small groups. I will expect you to remain productive for the entire class period. You may not leave early, even if you think you have completed the activity at hand. In order to work on activities during class, you will need to bring a laptop with Tableau installed to every class period. Don’t forget to bring a charging cable or charge your battery ahead of time. We will also use MS Excel at times, so you will need to install that on your machine as well. Oce 365 is free for DePauw students, and instructions for installation are linked in Moodle.

Student Outcomes

  • Identify appropriate data visualizations (e.g., bar graphs, line graphs, choropleths) for different purposes.
  • Use Tableau to create a variety of graphical representations of data, including bar graphs, line graphs, scatter plots, choropleths, pie charts, and animations.
  • Format graphical representations–colors, patterns, titles, guidelines, etc.–so that they are easy to interpret.
  • Construct Tableau dashboards and stories to clearly convey complex relationships and narratives based on data.
  • Find and acquire data on a variety of topics, and assess its reliability.
  • Perform rudimentary data cleaning and reshaping.
  • Use Tableau to combine multiple data sources (via relationships, joins, blends, and maybe using Tableau Prep Builder).
  • Use web searches along with ocial documentation to independently learn new techniques in Tableau.
  • Use graphical representations as evidence to support a point in a formal piece of writing.
  • Give a formal, oral presentation that incorporates graphical representations of data.
  • Articulate ethical considerations related to graphical representations of data.

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