A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
In this video, I extend the Streamlit app that we’ve been working on even more. We’ll convert a set of drop-down lists into a form, change the behavior of these drop-down lists, and add date picker logic.
Click through for the video, the code to date, and links to additional resources. I’m pretty happy so far with this series, and we’re about to kick it up to another level with the next video.
Comments closedJerry Tuttle talks radar charts:
I was looking for an opportunity to practice with radar charts and I came across an article on five-tool baseball players, so this seemed like a perfect application for this kind of chart.
A radar chart is an alternative to a column chart to display three or more quantitative variables. The chart graphs the values in a circular manner around a center point.
I have an unhealthy love for radar charts in the right circumstances, and this love came from the way you did scouting in earlier versions of Madden NFL games, using the radar chart to estimate traits. The only problem was, the charts turned out to be a lie: they didn’t really correlate to player talents, but that was something I learned years and years later and probably explains why I’m so bitter all the time. H/T R-Bloggers.
Comments closedRita Fainshtein makes waffles:
Why is it more challenging to get an accurate answer from pie/donut charts and why do we feel less confident trying to read them?
The main reason is the difficulty in calculating the areas of the pie slices/lengths of the donut arcs.
This is much more challenging and less confident than comparing the areas of rectangular shapes.
Rita takes a look at the waffle chart custom visual available for Power BI and then builds something custom fit for the task.
Comments closedAllison Kennedy talks color in Power BI:
Being a good data storyteller means using all the tools at your disposal. This includes color. It is important to note that I’m not advocating the use of color only in your reports – you need to ensure that there is another method to discern what’s going on with the data for those in your audience who might be colorblind. But that doesn’t mean we can’t play around with color and use it to add meaning to our reports.
Most people I know would agree that GREEN means ‘Good’ and RED means ‘Bad’. But colors can be very personal. For example, my favorite color is BLUE and it was also the color I chose for my math notebooks throughout school. (Yes, math was my favorite subject – I guess it’s no surprise I ended up in a career that works so much with data.)
In addition to personal meaning of colors, there can also be cultural meanings around individual colors, and that can shape how individuals view a given color. Grace Fussell has one of my favorite articles on the topic.
Comments closedI continue a video series on Streamlit:
In this video, I extend a Streamlit app that I created in the prior video. This extension will include retrieving data from SQL Server, caching function results, operating a set of simple filters, and displaying visuals using tabs.
Click through for the video, as well as the code that I used.
Comments closedIn this post I will guide you through creating this chart in Power BI – it is a stacked bar chart that show the size/impact of three different measures – Sales Value, Sales Units and Avg Price in one visual.
It’s not a visualization that I would recommend but there might be use cases for it somewhere and it has been a good exercise in what we can do with visual calculations.
It’s very clever, I’ll give it that.
Comments closedI have started a new video series:
In this video, I talk about Streamlit, a great Python library for building data applications quickly. We discuss what data applications are, get an idea of how Streamlit compares to other code-first data visualization techniques, and start building a demo application. I also toss in a lengthy sidebar on Python virtual environments because of how important they are.
Streamlit certainly has its foibles—many of which I’ll cover in the series—but I like it a lot as a simple way of building data applications.
Comments closedMeagan Longoria explains some of what you get with themes in Power BI:
Power BI reports have a theme that specifies the default colors, fonts, and visual styles. In Power BI Desktop, you can choose to use a built-in theme, start with a built-in theme and customize it, or create your own theme.
Creating your own theme involves specifying formatting options in a JSON file and importing it into your report. This post will focus on the theme colors, but there are lots of other options that can be specified in a theme, including structural colors, fonts, and page and visual formatting options.
Read on to learn more about the three primary sets of colors you can specify.
Comments closedDario Radecic shows off a neat library:
The main criticism people have when it comes to ggplot2 is the static nature of the charts it has to offer. Truth be told, it will never be an interactive visualization king like Highcharts, but it doesn’t mean animation is out of the picture.
Meet R gganimate – a natural extension of ggplot2 that allows you to visualize your data change through time or some other variable, and then render and export the chart as a set of PNGs, or a single GIF/MP4.
Click through to learn more about it. I remembered the original gganimate and was going to say, “Wow, I hadn’t heard of that library in forever.” But it turns out that Thomas Lin Pedersen built a newer version of the library and has added in quite a bit of functionality since the last time I looked. H/T R-Bloggers.
Comments closedKenneth Omorodion burns the candle from both ends:
Recently, I wrote an article, Rank and Sort Data Based on Multiple Columns in Power BI Using DAX. However, it is very common for business users to request the ability to dynamically view the Top N and Bottom N values of a measure, like Total Sales, on the same visual. This requirement is simple to implement on either the Top or Bottom N options. But, the challenge is when we need to represent the two options on the same chart simultaneously.
Read on for an example of how to do this.
Comments closed