Tag: data

It’s all about the bike: First Tableau #IronQuest submission

COVID-19 induced isolation has been good to me in terms of getting time to do some Tableau work. I had my heart set on completing my first ever Iron Quest submission. This months theme was the “Quantified Self”. As soon as I read about the theme, I immediately knew what I wanted to visualise: the cycling history.

What’s Iron Quest?

For those not in the know Iron Quest is an initiative begun by Sarah Bartlett. Sarah describes it on her website as:

Iron Quest is a monthly community-led data visualization project which follows a similar format to

… Read the rest

#MakeoverMonday 2020 Week 21: Revenues by music format over time

I’m back in the #MakeoverMonday fold after a break for a number of months. Being a former music journalist I felt obligated to participate in this week’s challenge which involved 40 years of data on US music sales by format. Here’s the original visualisation from an article by Nick Routley.

While the original visualisation was actually quite good and informative, I did give myself an hour or two to have a play in Tableau Public as well as the open-source GNU Image Manipulation Program (with the problematic acronym) where I had a go at designing a custom logo based … Read the rest

Leave our Bond alone? | #MakeOverMonday 2020 Week 5

So I finally managed to grab some free time to contribute something to the MakeOverMonday social data project. I’ve been a fan for many years and have often wanted to contribute – and finally I’ve done something that I’m relatively happy with. This is my data story analysing potential attitudes to changes in the James Bond character in terms of Brexit affiliations.

You can also … Read the rest

NZIEC 2017: Some reflections on a whirlwind trip to Auckland.

On the flight back to Australia, I got the opportunity to reflect a little on the New Zealand International Education Conference I had just attended in Auckland. Overall, a fun, though slightly tiring, slog across the Tasman. I got to meet a heap of new people in and around the conference and was lucky enough to be involved in two sessions.

On Tuesday, I spent 30 minutes talking to delegates about how to build the analytical mindset during my session called Getting started in the Data Game. Mostly, I was emphasising the base skills needed in analytics and how … Read the rest

The Data Game: Building Analytics Capability in International Education

[Originally published by IEAA’s Vista Magazine (Summer 2016/17) — I’d strongly recommend following them online and reading their publications if you’re interested in Australian international education!]

Embracing an analytic mindset and capitalising on the technologies in the era of big data are key to reaching Australia’s strategic international education goals, writes Darragh Murray.

A tale of prediction and teenage pregnancy

In 2012, journalist Charles Duhigg came across a fascinating story concerning the power of prediction and teenage pregnancy. Writing for the New York Times, Duhigg told how an irate man confronted the manager of a Target department store … Read the rest

Tableau tricks: Adding colour to geomaps by continent or region

Tableau is a great tool for data visualisation. One major selling point of the product is its excellent mapping tools which make building visualisation fun and interpreting data a hell of a lot easier than in a flat table.

Recently, I was attempting to replicate a neat visualisation I saw on the Guardian’s data blog. Simply put, I wanted to measure some data by country but colour code the data by region as well. A trip through Tableau’s detailed online help and forums only turned up solutions that were either way too complicated or not quite suited to what … Read the rest