As of right now, I am having more computer problems that are causing difficulties than anything else that is occurring with my project. Tableau does not want to open up and add another data set in order for me to add city populations into my visualizations. I am hoping my computer will come around and load the data set into Tableau instead of just a spinning mouse and program not responding to issues. In the meantime, I have worked on some more visualizations (without the populations) to show the top six states with the most observed hauntings. I have also started writing in details from the datasets into an essay format on a Word Document. Basically, some of the information is difficult to show in the visualizations but will add to them as well.
I want these visualizations to show the information in an easier format for readers to understand. It will be a way to reinforce the information in the paper. I plan to point out the visualizations in the paper, not as charts or appendixes in the end, but references the figures within the paper itself. I want this project to look like a short article with figures and chart references that someone would come across while doing research on databases.
As stated before I still have to work on my visualizations. I have ideas about how I want them to look and what information I want them to show. I am hoping I can get them done soon and start embedding them into my paper. Which I also plan to continue to work on as well.
3 replies on “Module 11:Work”
It sounds like your tableau is struggling with the size of the population file; are you using the 2010 population by state file https://maevekane.net/data/2010_state_population.csv, or one of the other ones? The others are much larger and might slow things down. Or is Tableau just not opening in general? If you can do a more detailed breakdown of where you’re getting hung up, I can help you get unstuck. (Email or a zoom chat would work too)
As an FYI for your drafting process, you will not be able to embed interactive visualizations into a word doc. You can export images of your visualizations from the public.tableau.com page where your workbook is saved, using the little icon in the lower right that looks like a box with a down arrow in it. Word also occasionally has issues with copy/pasting into wordpress posts (for a post on the course site), so if that’s your plan, make sure you give yourself a little pad of time to fix any goofy formatting issues. (And keep in mind that anything online is a pain in the ass to do footnotes, so parentheticals will make your life easier in the long run). You can also start a post on the course blog and keep it in drafts to come back to it later; you don’t have to post it right away.
Yes, I am trying to use the 2010 file. I think it is just Tableau or my computer being difficult. We have had internet issues lately. I open it up and when I click to add a file it pops up with my file folders/downloads. I click on the 2010 excel file and the mouse just starts spinning and it says the program is not responding. Then I have to close the program and reopen it. But it does this every time I try to add a new file. It has no problems when I try to work with the haunted file that is already saved to Tableau. I do not know how I can fix this to get the population information into my project. Any suggestions?
Can you post or email me a direct link to your tableau workbook? (This is the link on public.tableau.com you see when you save your file) I can’t think of why it would be crashing to add that file if it didn’t crash when you first made the workbook. At this point, I would disregard doing the population stuff if you’re still able to do the other charts without it. If Tableau is crashing to the point that you can’t make anything, even with the single file of the haunting data, lmk and we’ll work something else out. Googlesheets makes embeddable charts, but they’re not as complex or customizable as Tableau.