My Tableau vizzes of the day recap

Nir Smilga
4 min readAug 13, 2022

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Today (13-Aug-22) I was honored to receive my 5th viz of the day (VOTD) by Tableau Public. To me, this is truly a milestone.

I remember my first encounter with tableau public. It was 4 years ago when I saw the Iconic Beatles Analysis by Adam E McCann.

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/adam.e.mccann/viz/BeatlesAnalysis/BeatlesAnalysis

It never occurred to me that Tableau could do that.
Amazed and inspired, I’ve decided to set a goal: I will have my own VOTD one day.
Using online content and resources by #DataFam, the great community around Tableau, I enhanced my skills and started to publish my first vizzes on Tableau Public.

#1. The Beatles Analysis, Sep-20

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/nir.smilga/viz/TheBeatles-SongWritersperAlbum/TheBeatlesDash

One year later it happened:
Still inspired by Adam E McCann’s viz, I tried to visualize my own verssion on the Beatles.

A great Stream graph tutorial by Ludovic Tavernier inspired me to create an interactive timeline to showcase the Beatles discography.
The next morning, my phone was full of notifications from Twitter, which I rarely used then (had 3 followers and I think 0 total likes).
I was excited and proud to see my name on Tableau Public’s Gallery

#2. Tableau Public Explorer, Nov-20

As I told you already, I find Tableau Public to be a great source of inspiration. I wanted to explore authors worldwide by country.
I used the awesome Cerebro Project Viz by Josh Tapley that gathered Metadata using Tableau Public’s API, and visualized my version to it:

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/nir.smilga/viz/TableauPublicExplorer/TableauPublicExplorer

#3. Piano Classroom, Aug-21

I really love music. I play Keyboard and Guitar and found that tableau can play specific tones using URL actions when I saw this viz by Yovel Deutel.
My biggest challenge was making tableau play three notes simultaneously to create a chord sound. In the end, I managed to accomplish it by using Parameter actions, which is one of my favorite features in Tableau!

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/nir.smilga/viz/PianoClassroom/PianoClassroom

#4. Melting Reality , May-22

I love maps. My first “Aha moment” using Tableau was when I found that double clicking on a geographical field generates a beautiful map instantly.
I created several vizzes using maps, most of them around Israel’s elections.
I discovered that Tableau already amazing mapping capabilities can be further enhanced using QGIS in this blog by the Flerlage Twins (Ken Flerlage, Kevin Flerlage) which are definitely #Datafam cornerstones.

When I found a really great resource containing glaciers' polygons measures over time, I thought it would be great to visualize this and also raise awareness about melting glaciers.

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/nir.smilga/viz/MeltingReality/MeltingReality

#5. Unisex Names in US, Aug-22

This is my fresh VOTD on US Unisex Names.
Inspired by a podcast I heard about Israeli names, I made this data visualization in Hebrew. I thought, why not make it in English as well?
I used small multiples chart using this great tutorial by Donabel Santos

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/nir.smilga/viz/UnisexNamesinUS/UnisexNamesinUS

Final thoughts

I love vizzing. Tableau Public is a great platform to share your data stories with the world. If you haven't done already, I strongly recommend creating a profile and subscribing to viz of the day to get a daily portion of inspiration.
You can follow authors you relate to, publish your own vizzes and create your very own portfolio!
My Tableau Public portfolio

Thanks for reading!

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Nir Smilga

Passionate about data, insights and visualizations, Tableau featured author