Foreword xii Preface xiii Acknowledgments xxiv About the Author xxvi Chapter 1 Storytelling in a Digital Era 1 A Visual Revolution 2 From Visualization to Visual Data Storytelling: An Evolution 6 From Visual to Story: Bridging the Gap 8 Summary 13 Chapter 2 The Power of Visual Data Stories 15 The Science of Storytelling 16 The Brain on Stories 16 The Human on Stories 18 The Power of Stories 20 The Classic Visualization Example 20 Using Small Personal Data for Big Stories 23 The Two-or-Four Season Debate 27 Napoleon''s March 29 Stories Outside of the Box 31 Summary 32 Chapter 3 Getting Started with Tableau 33 Using Tableau 34 Why Tableau? 34 The Tableau Product Portfolio 36 Tableau Server 37 Tableau Desktop 37 Tableau Online 37 Tableau Public 37 Getting Started 38 Connecting to Data 38 Connecting to Tables 39 Live Versus Extract 41 Connecting to Multiple Tables with Joins 42 Basic Data Prep with Data Interpreter 44 Navigating the Tableau Interface 45 Menus and Toolbar 46 Data Window 47 Shelves and Cards 47 Legends 47 Understanding Dimensions and Measures 48 Dimensions 48 Measures 48 Continuous and Discrete 48 Summary 49 Chapter 4 Importance of Context in Storytelling 51 Context in Action 53 Harry Potter: Hero or Menace? 53 Ensuring Relevant Context 55 Exploratory versus Explanatory Analysis 56 Structuring Stories 58 Story Plot 59 Story Genre 60 Audience Analysis for Storytelling 61 Who 61 What 62 Why 62 How 63 Summary 64 Chapter 5 Choosing the Right Visual 65 The Bar Chart 66 Tableau How-To: Bar Chart 68 The Line Chart 70 Tableau How-To: Line Chart 72 The Pie and Donut Charts 73 Tableau How-To: Pie and Donut Charts 74 The Scatter Plot 78 Tableau How-To: Scatter Plots 79 The Packed Bubble Chart 83 Tableau How-To: Packed Bubble Charts 83 The Treemap 85 Tableau How-To: Treemaps 86 The Heat Map 88 Tableau How-To: Heat Maps 89 Maps 91 Connecting to Geographic Data 92 Assigning Geographic Roles 93 Creating Geographic Hierarchies 95 Proportional Symbol Maps 97 Choropleth Map 100 Summary 106 Chapter 6 Curating Visuals for Your Audience 107 Visual Design Building Blocks 110 Color 110 Stepped Color 114 Reversed Color 115 Color Effects 118 Opacity 118 Mark Borders 119 Mark Halos 120 The Truth about Red and Green 121 Lines 124 Formatting Grid Lines, Zero Lines, and Drop Lines 128 Formatting Borders 131 Formatting, Shading, and Banding 134 Shapes 139 Shape Marks Card 139 Custom Shapes 140 Summary 142 Chapter 7 Preparing Data for Storytelling 143 Basic Data Prep in Tableau: Data Interpreter 144 Data Interpreter in Action 145 Handling Nulls in Tableau 147 Cleaning Messy Survey Data in Excel 148 Step 1: Surface Cleaning 150 Step 2: Creating a Numeric Copy 151 Step 3: Creating the Meta Helper File 153 Pivoting Data from Wide to Tall 155 Reshaping Survey Data with Tableau 10 156 Step 1: Creating Extracts 156 Step 2: Joining Data Sources 160 Summary 165 Chapter 8 Storyboarding Frame by Frame 167 Understanding Stories in Tableau 168 Individual Visualizations (Sheets) 169 Dashboards 169 Story Points 172 The Storyboarding Process 176 Planning Your Story''s Purpose 176 Storyboarding Your Data Story 177 Building a Story 178 Making Meta Meaningful 179 Visualizing Survey Demographics 179 Act One: Demographic Dashboard and Key Question 185 Act Two: Questioning Character Aggression 187 Act Three: The Reveal 188 Summary 190 Chapter 9 Advanced Storytelling Charts 191 Timelines 192 Bar-in-Bar Charts 199 Likert Visualizations 202 100% Stacked Bar Chart 203 Divergent Stacked Bar Chart 205 Lollipop Charts 215 Labeled Lollipops 219 Word Clouds 221 Summary 224 Chapter 10 Closing Thoughts 225 Five Steps to Visual Data Storytelling 226 Step 1 Find Data That Supports Your Story 226 Step 2 Layer Information for Understanding 227 Step 3 Design to Reveal 227 Step 4 Beware the False Reveal 227 Step 5 Tell It Fast 228 The Important Role of Feedback 228 Ongoing Learning 229 Teach Yourself: External Resources 229 Companion Materials to This Text 231.