Joe was introduced to Tableau by The Information Lab at a careers event just before graduating with a BA in Earth Sciences from the University of Cambridge. He then became familiar with geospatial data in his first role after university working at the UK Hydrographic Office, the government office for maritime data. Working in a highly visual space encouraged Joe to become more involved with data visualisation, developing his Tableau skills in his spare time. He is looking forward to applying data analytics in areas of previous experience such as across the Energy and Marine sectors.
Joe Beaven
![](https://content.theinformationlab.co.uk/images/joe_beaven_501558108d.jpg)
Blog Posts
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Thu 21 Nov 2019 | Joe Beaven
Reflections on The Data School
So today is our penultimate day at The Data School and we’ve been asked to
reflect on our time in training. Overall, I can’t believe how quickly it’s gone
by and it will be strange not coming into the office everyday with the rest of
DS16 now that we are going our separate ways for placement
![](https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/content/images/wordpress/2019/11/Initial-Dash-1-1.png)
![Avatar](https://content.theinformationlab.co.uk/images/joe_beaven_501558108d.jpg)
Tue 12 Nov 2019 | Joe Beaven
One-year-on Part II: Cost of Beer at MLB Grounds
So I finally got round to redesigning my first ever viz on Tableau Public. Using
Makeover Monday’s dataset on Women in the House of Representatives I went from
this (published 15th October 2018)…
to this…
https://public.tableau.com/profile/joe
![](https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/content/images/wordpress/2019/10/Initial-Dash-1.png)
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Wed 30 Oct 2019 | Joe Beaven
One-year-on Part I: Women in the House of Representatives
Two weeks ago marked one year since I posted my first Viz to Tableau Public.
Looking back over my old work, I always think ‘this could have been more
insightful’; ‘this could have used something I’ve learnt since’ or ‘what was I
even thinking?!’. So, I decided to reviz my old work ‘one-year-on’
![](https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/content/images/wordpress/2019/10/Ex-3-D-1.png)
![Avatar](https://content.theinformationlab.co.uk/images/joe_beaven_501558108d.jpg)
Tue 29 Oct 2019 | Joe Beaven
Layout Containers - how to get your Item Hierarchy under control
Tableau’s Layout Containers are not always the most intuitive, and I am probably
not the only person who has simply dragged worksheets onto a dashboard until
they look about right.
The problem with this comes later on when trying to align worksheets or bring
more worksheets onto the view
![](https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/content/images/wordpress/2019/10/Dashboard.png)
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Wed 23 Oct 2019 | Joe Beaven
Dashboard Week #3: Indian Electricity Network
Today we were tasked to download data from Harvard Dataverse on electricity in
India. The data was survey based (again). Respondents were asked about their
energy source, their perceptions to energy use as well as background such as
employment and where they lived
![](https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/content/images/wordpress/2019/10/10-2.png)
![Avatar](https://content.theinformationlab.co.uk/images/joe_beaven_501558108d.jpg)
Tue 22 Oct 2019 | Joe Beaven
Dashboard Week #2: Web Scraping the Rules of Parliament
Today’s challenge was based on Rules of Parliament and involved getting data
from ParlRulesData.org. The only problem was, we weren’t allowed to download any
data. Instead, all the information we needed had to be scraped from the website
directly.
Getting the data:
The ParlRulesData
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Tue 15 Oct 2019 | Joe Beaven
Include a row outside of your Top N when mark is selected on a different sheet
Due to limited space on dashboards, charts with many marks are often cut down to
a view which shows the Top 10 or 20 marks. Sometimes we might want to
investigate a mark outside of the Top N and see this included on our view
![](https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/content/images/wordpress/2019/10/Target-1.png)
![Avatar](https://content.theinformationlab.co.uk/images/joe_beaven_501558108d.jpg)
Mon 14 Oct 2019 | Joe Beaven
Drilldown into data (with formatting and tooltip tricks)
Often on a dashboard in Tableau there is not enough space to display all the
levels of detail in your dataset. Users will also prefer to see a less granular
level of detail before looking into what is driving the trends by investigating
the underlying data
![](https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/content/images/wordpress/2019/09/Chain.png)
![Avatar](https://content.theinformationlab.co.uk/images/joe_beaven_501558108d.jpg)
Wed 25 Sep 2019 | Joe Beaven
Chained Analytical Apps
As outlined in Matthew Armstrong’s blog ‘Alteryx Basics: Analytical Apps ‘,
Alteryx Apps provide users a way to quickly run workflows without loading
Alteryx Designer. They also offer flexibility in the output of a workflow by
building in User Interface tools
![](https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/content/images/wordpress/2019/08/Picture1-3.png)
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Fri 16 Aug 2019 | Joe Beaven
Tableau Time Saving Tip #2: Format all charts on a dashboard
Ever built up some views quickly without giving much thought to the text
formatting? By the time you come to finish up your dashboard, there are
Dashboard Titles, Worksheet Titles, Textboxes, BAN’s, Axes, Labels and Tooltips
all needing to be re-formatted
![](https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/content/images/wordpress/2019/08/Target-2.png)
![Avatar](https://content.theinformationlab.co.uk/images/joe_beaven_501558108d.jpg)
Fri 16 Aug 2019 | Joe Beaven
Using a row in a Datasource as a reference line
Some Datasources contain a row which is a natural reference line. An example of
this came in my first weekly project last Friday where I looked at diversity in
Tech companies. There was a row for each company, with column’s for company
gender balance and proportion employees by race
![](https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/content/images/wordpress/2019/08/Target.png)
![Avatar](https://content.theinformationlab.co.uk/images/joe_beaven_501558108d.jpg)
Mon 12 Aug 2019 | Joe Beaven
Allow user to change which Measure is displayed on a worksheet
Ever had a data source where each column is showing a similar metric that you
would like the user to be able to switch between? I faced this revisiting an
early Makeover Monday on diversity in US tech companies for my first weekly
project at the DS
![](https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/content/images/wordpress/2019/08/Blog-1c.png)
![Avatar](https://content.theinformationlab.co.uk/images/joe_beaven_501558108d.jpg)
Thu 08 Aug 2019 | Joe Beaven
Tableau Time Saving Tip #1: Default Properties of Measures
On Wednesday, we had our first day using Tableau at The Data School. Going right
back to basics allowed me to see some of the things that I had missed whilst
teaching myself Tableau over the past year. I learnt a few things which would
have saved me so much time making vizzes