Tableau Professional Edition Version 2.1, published by Tableau Software, outdoes Microsoft Excel in quantitative analysis.
The results were interesting. IBM was perceived as being tops in executive management, leadership qualities and technology vision, while Cisco was the favorite in key technology leadership and as a strategic supplier. Microsoft won out in buying intentions.
After reading the article, we started wondering whether there were correlations among these attributes. To find that out, the suitable tools seemed to be Microsoft Excel’s PivotTable and PivotChart.
So, we tabulated the data with the vendors’ names in the first column and the attribute values in subsequent columns, and put the score data into the body. We then selected the entire table and made a PivotChart. Seemed like a good idea, but to make a long story short, it turns out PivotTables and PivotCharts aren’t suitable tools for this endeavor. You can’t even get as far as making a scatter pot.
Thus it was that we turned to Tableau Professional Edition Version 2.1, published by Tableau Software. This is one of the finest applications we’ve seen this year. It is amazingly fast; has a well-designed user interface that is remarkably intuitive; and, considering its complexity, it is stunningly bug-free!
After opening a new Tableau workbook, you connect to a data source. Your choices for the Professional Edition are Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, text files, MySQL, MS SQL Server, MS Analysis Services, Oracle, Hyperion Essbase and IBM DB2 OLAP Server.
Once you have opened a source, the data will be split by default into dimensions (fields containing qualitative, categorical information) and measures (fields containing numeric or quantitative data). Measures are used as axes for the rows or columns in a table, and dimensions create headers. (Note that these distinctions are far more complex when you are dealing with relational databases where you can convert from measures to dimensions, which in turn can be converted into continuous quantities.)
In our example, opening the survey data spreadsheet in Tableau gave us eight measures, one for each of the six attributes plus two created automatically — Measure Values (a collection of all the measures of your data) and Number of Records. Two dimensions were created automatically also — Vendor (the names from the Vendors columns of the original table) and Measure Names, a listing of all those names.
We dragged Superior Executive Management to the columns field in the charting area and Superior Leadership Qualities to the rows field. Then we dragged Vendor from dimensions into the chart to define the data and dragged Strategic Supplier to the size field and Buying Intentions to the color field. Voilà! One scatter chart comparing those attributes, as we had originally had wanted!
Unfortunately, this chart didn’t show us anything interesting, but plotting the Key Technology Leader and the Superior Technology Vision measures showed that companies that score high in one attribute score high in the other.
These are trivial examples of what Tableau can do, however. To appreciate how powerful the software is, check out the product tour.
Tableau Professional Edition costs $1,800, the Professional Edition (MySQL) version (data sources are limited to MySQL, Excel, MS Access and text files) is $1,300, and Standard Edition (data sources are limited to Excel, MS Access and text files) is $1,000. All versions include one year of upgrades and support. A free 30-day trial is available.
This is a tool anyone doing serious quantitative analysis cannot live without.
