As my date with the Tableau Data Analyst Exam edges closer and closer, I've decided to document some interesting questions that come up in practice. Hopefully these blogs can help others prepare for the exam as well as consolidate some of my own learning.
If you're looking for a blog outlining how the exam works, and the best ways to prepare, check out Shahbaz's blog here!
Many of the questions I have encountered so far in preparation have included a mix of awkward wording and or the requirement to use some slightly less common used functions (at least in my day to day).
(If you would like to follow along the questions and data sets used can be found below, within the free Data Analyst exam.)
Here's one of them:
The first thing I noticed is that the question requires us to isolate the Customer's first and last name. I therefore Split Customer Name within the Data Source of Tableau Desktop. In this case, an automatic split works fine.
Secondly, we want to isolate Customers that have a first name ending in 'a' and a last name beginning with 'F'. We can use the String functions LEFT and RIGHT in order to isolate these parts of the name.
We can then place these calculated fields on Columns and add Sales to our text. This isolates Customer's into Groups based on these Calculated fields, and shows their Sales value.
The question specifies that we want to find the Total Sales (as a %) for Customer's with First Name ending in 'a' and Last Name beginning with 'F'.
We therefore need to apply a quick Table Calculation in order to find the Sales Value as a %.
After doing such we can see that the % of Sales Value for Customer's with names ending in 'a' and beginning with 'F' is 0.182%. This (thankfully) is one of our answer options!