Intro to Tableau lab

For our first Tableau lab, we’re going to use data from the General Social Survey. Their Data Explorer lets you select variables that are of interest to you, but it does require you to create an account.

• Make an account on the website
• Pick some variables you are interested in
• “Extract” the data as an Excel file (you may want the labels to be the questions)

More instructions are on their website.

If you are opposed to creating an account, you can use my GSS data extract, but you may need to refer to the documentation to figure out what some of the variables mean. I also don’t remember which year it is from!

Once you have some data, import it into Tableau. Then, try to:

• create a bar chart
• map a variable to the colors of the bar chart
• change the color scheme to something different than the default

I’ll go through this all in class, but this video by Penguin Analytics may help if you are reviewing. Some things to consider:

• what is the difference between a “measure” and a “dimension”?
• how do you filter data in Tableau?
• how do you map a variable to color?

Upload a screenshot or exported image of your colored bar chart.