Author: Ryan Sleeper
-
Dashboards aren’t dead. They’re just explanatory.
The problem isn’t that companies don’t have enough data. There’s never been a time in history when businesses have had more data, and data…
-
3 Ways to Navigate AI’s Push vs. Pull Trade-Off
Here’s what nobody is talking about… The maligned AI catchphrase that is a telltale sign that AI slop is forthcoming. But seriously, I wrote…
-
3 Reasons the Analytics Maturity Framework Is Broken (and What’s Better!)
During our Decision-Ready Data strategy workshops, one focus area is ensuring practitioners and stakeholders align on the type of analytics being delivered. We’ve shared…
-
Visualizing Novel Use Cases with Claude Sonnet 4.6
Like so many others, I have been intrigued by the capabilities of advancements in AI and its potential to make data visualization and analytics…
-
Data vs. Analytics vs. Visual Analytics: What’s the Difference?
As tradition holds, Playfair Data shares our analytics trends and predictions going into each new year and recaps it by sharing the Playfair+ tutorials…
-
Tableau vs. Power BI vs. Oracle Analytics Cloud: 2026 Comparison Guide
Okay, I get it. Searching for “Tableau vs. Power BI” leads to over 25 million results in Google, and that is if you can…
-
Data democratization is dead. Long live data democratization.
This year, I had the opportunity to attend my first Gartner Data & Analytics Summit, one of the leading community events for analytics leaders…
-
3 Ways to Avoid Data Visualization Desire Paths
Desire paths are unplanned trails that form when users circumvent the carefully constructed paths before them in favor of routes they perceive to be…
-
The Parallels Between Storytelling and Data Visualization
Think of the lyrics from your favorite song – or any song for that matter. I guarantee it contains the words “I”, “you”, or…
-
Introducing “Gap” Charts in Tableau
In Practical Tableau, we introduced the concept of a pace chart, an alternative bullet graph that normalizes progress to goal on a 100-point scale.…
-
Celebrating 5 Years of Playfair+ with 5 Sneak Previews
Playfair+ members (and potential members) – Thank you for your support of our premier visual analytics eLearning platform. Five years ago this month, Playfair+…
-
How to Color Goal Surpluses / Budget Excesses in Tableau Bar Charts
Great visualizations answer the question – “Compared to what?” – without making users expend much effort uncovering their next actionable insight. This often leads…
-
3 Ways to Make Gorgeous Gantt Charts in Tableau
Traditional Tableau Gantt charts display a mark at a start date and size the mark by duration, showing a visual connection between a starting…
-
How to Color Entire Tableau Charts Based on Latest Performance
I often see stock ticker gauges that show a trend for a symbol or index, but where the entire chart is colored green or…
-
3 More Ways to Make Beautiful Bar Charts in Tableau
The humble Tableau bar chart still reigns supreme when it comes to visualizing differences between categorial, or discrete, data – but it seems many…
-
3 Ways to Make Powerful Pareto Charts in Tableau
Pareto charts in Tableau – named for the Pareto principle inspired by Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto – help visualize the dimension members causing the…
-
3 Ways to Make Wonderful Waterfall Charts in Tableau
Waterfall charts visualize the individual categorical or time period contributions to a running total and are one of my favorite choices for analyzing a…
-
How to Make Unit Charts with Continuous Measures in Tableau
Unit charts – or stacked bar charts made up of equal-sized marks – take the benefits of the bar chart and add a practical…
-
Introducing a New Highlighting User Experience in Tableau
Data visualization is much more than “making pretty charts”. Valuable decision-making tools require strategic planning to identify objectives and business questions that will cause…
-
How to Highlight Entire Table Rows in Tableau (Including Headers)
One of my favorite ways to highlight table rows of interest in a Tableau crosstab is to place a dimension or calculated field on…