Ian Coe, Product Manager

Advanced Analytics
with Tableau

We used to exist in a world of either-or. Either you knew how to program or advanced
analytics were out your reach. Either you learned to program in R/Python/SAS or you got
someone else to do the heavy lifting. At Tableau we believe that to truly augment human
intelligence, we need to provide rich capabilities for users of all levels of technical ability.
We believe that advanced analytics shouldnt require programming, that users should get
insights and validation in one place with common skills.

Tableau is unique among analytics platforms in that it serves both business users and
data scientists. Its simplicity empowers non-programmers to conduct deep analysis without
writing code. And its analytical depth augments the workflows of data science groups
at cutting-edge analytics companies like Facebook and Amazon.

With a few clicks, you can create box plots, tree maps, and even predictive visuals.
With just a few more clicks, you can create forecasts or complex cohort analyses.
You can even connect to R and use Tableau as a powerful front-end to visualize model
results. This means non-technical users can ask previously unapproachable questions,
while data scientists can iterate and discover deeper insights faster, yielding better,
more valuable findings.

In this paper we will explore how Tableau can help with all stages of an analytics project,
but focus specifically on a few advanced capabilities. Broadly, we will look at the following
scenarios and the capabilities that support them:

Segmentation and cohort analysis: With drag-and-drop segmentation, Tableau promotes

not only an intuitive investigative flow, but also rapid and flexible cohort analysis.

Scenario and what-if analysis: By combining Tableaus flexible front-end with powerful
input capabilities, you can quickly modify calculations and test different scenarios.

Sophisticated calculations: Tableau possesses a robust calculation language,

which makes it easy to augment your analysis with arbitrary calculations and perform
complex data manipulations with concise expressions.

Time-series analysis: Since much of the worlds data can be modeled by time series,
Tableau natively supports rich time-series analysis, meaning you can explore seasonality,
sample your data, or perform other common time-series operations within a robust UI.

Predictive analysis: Tableau contains out-of-the-box stats and predictive technologies,

which help data experts codify theses and uncover latent variables.

R integration: An R plugin provides the power and ease of use of Tableaus front-end,
while allowing experts to leverage prior work in other platforms and handle nuanced
statistical needs.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Segmentation and Cohort Analysis

What-If and Scenario Analysis
Sophisticated Calculations
Time-Series Analysis
Predictive Analysis
R Integration

1.

Segmentation and Cohort Analysis

To generate an initial hypothesis, business users and data experts often start the same way:
by creating segments and/or conducting an informal cohort analysis. Asking a series of basic questions
about different segments helps analysts understand their data and validate their hypotheses
(e.g. Do customers who pay with credit retain better than those who pay with check?). The ability to
iterate rapidly can help drive model development and ensure projects stay on track. The ideal platform
for this phase should support the following:
Rapid ideation:
Provide an intuitive investigation canvas and near-instant feedback to questions asked as part
of the analytical flow.
Simple set operations:
Create and combine cohorts using standard set operations or a simple UI.
Data issue handling:
Correct data errors and adjust cohorts without needing permissions to modify the underlying data source.
Seamless updates when data changes:
Propagate data updates through the analysis without running manual update scripts or refreshing caches.

Figure 1: This interactive dashboard shows sales contribution by country and product.

Tableau possesses a rich set of capabilities to enable quick, iterative analysis and comparison of
segments. For example, with just a few calculated fields and some drag-and-drop operations,
you can create a dashboard that breaks down a countrys contribution to total sales across product
categories (Figure 1).
The solution leverages Tableaus ability to dynamically create segments of data (in this case, sales by
country and product category) and slice-and-dice them with drag and drop. These same capabilities
can be easily coupled with Tableaus time-series functionality (described in the section on time-series
analysis below) to conduct a more formal cohort analysis.
Tableaus flexible interface also makes it easy to test different theories and explore distributions
across cohorts. Tableaus ability to iterate visually saves countless hours of script tweaking and
re-running simulations.
As seen in Figure 2, simply dragging the segmentation fields onto the canvas generates a small multiples
view and trend lines by cohort, highlighting differences in correlation across groups. The trend line is
automatically recomputed for each of the segments of interest without any additional work from the user.

Figure 2: Segment and explore data in seconds.

Figure 3: Define Sets graphically.

Using sets, you can define collections of data objects either by manual selection (Figure 3) or using
programmatic logic. Sets can be useful in a number of scenarios including filtering, highlighting, cohort
calculations, and outlier analysis. You can also combine multiple Sets (Figure 4) in order to test different
scenarios or create multiple cohorts for simulationsfor example, combining different, independentlygenerated customer groups for a retention analysis or applying multiple successive criteria.

Figure 4: Combine multiple Sets

Figure 5: Create a Group

To support the need for creating ad-hoc categories and establishing hierarchies, Tableau has a feature
called Groups. Groups can also help with basic data cleaning needs.
Groups let users structure data in an intuitive way for the analysis task at handfor example, creating
a group of the English-speaking countries as shown in Figure 5. This allows the analyst to customize the
presentation and control the aggregation of data throughout the analysis.
In addition, Groups help when data has consistency and quality issues. For example, California may be
called by its full name, but may also be referred to as CA or Calif. Analysts and business users often do
not have permissions to change source systems directly to clean up issues, meaning small data errors
can greatly encumber exploratory analysis. Having to stop asking questions in order to request data
changes delays projects and disrupts the rapid development of ideas. With Groups, you can quickly
define a new segment that includes all of the alternate names for the purposes of your analysis and
continue to ask questions without disrupting your flow.
Inherent to all of these capabilities are simple updates. In Tableau, if you choose a live connection and
update your data, your analysis and all the underlying components such as Sets and Groups will update
as well. This means that cohort membership updates automatically without manually re-running reports
or dependent scripts. Simple updates help ease the reporting burden and are yet another way to test
scenarios. They make it possible to swap out the underlying data in order to probe the sensitivity to initial
conditions without any need to update the analysis stack.
By letting users quickly segment and categorize their data, Tableau enables business users to perform
cohort analysis with relative ease. These easy cohorting capabilities also help data scientists investigate
initial hypotheses and test scenarios.

2.

What-If and Scenario Analysis

Sometimes users want to explore how changing a particular value or set of values affects the output
of their analysis. This could be used to test different theories, to highlight important scenarios for
colleagues, or to investigate new business possibilities. With Tableau, you can experiment with the inputs
of your analysis by providing the following capabilities:
Simple controls:
A flexible set of input controls allows you to add text, numeric inputs, or even more complex controls
such as sliders.
Full platform integration:
You can use the input values across Tableau to control thresholds in expressions, drive the cardinality
of a report, filter data sets, or do any combination of these.
Snapshot interesting results:
Easily flag and share scenarios using Tableaus ability to store input values but keep analysis live
and updating.
When performing a what-if analysis, you may want to change the base value of a calculation, redefine
a quota, or set initial conditions. Parameters in Tableau make this an easy task. By defining a parameter,
you provide a way to change the input values into your model or dashboard. Parameters can drive
calculations, alter filter thresholds, and even select what data goes into the dashboard. Non-technical
users can leverage parameters to experiment with different inputs and explore possible outputs from
complex models.
In addition to helping you test hypotheses, Tableaus Parameter feature lets you showcase results from
a what-if analysis in an interactive report. In Figure 6, parameters drive a what-if analysis around sales
commissions. The sales manager can experiment with commission rates, base salaries, and quotas,
all while getting real-time feedback on the impact to key metrics.

Figure 6: With this parameter-driven sales report, the interactor can explore the effect of quotas, commissions, and salaries
within the organization.

When combined with Stories (Tableaus way of building a narrative with data), Parameters allow you to
take snapshots of interesting results and continue exploring. Stories allow you to construct a presentation
that continues to update with data changes and viz modifications. However, Stories are smart to enough
to retain Parameter values, so you can flag scenarios and have confidence you can return to them
without interrupting your analytical flow. You can also compare the results from several different sets of
inputs without worrying about stale screenshots or rerunning simulations.
With Sets, Groups, drag-and-drop segmentation, and Parameters, Tableau makes it possible to move
from theories and questions to a professional-looking dashboard that allows even non-experts to ask
questions and test their own scenarios. Streamlining what-if analysis empowers data professionals to
focus on the more complex aspects of the analysis and deliver greater insight, while simple generation
of intuitive visuals allows end users to engage with the data. This increased engagement helps drive
change and empower better decision-making throughout an organization.

3.

Sophisticated Calculations
Typically, source data does not contain all the fields necessary for a comprehensive analysis.
Analysts need a simple yet powerful language to transform data and define intricate logic.
To fully empower analysts, the language should have the following capabilities:
Expressibility:
Author calculations using a robust computational framework backed by a library of functions.
Flexible aggregations:
Support aggregation at multiple levels of detail within the same analysis component.
Result set computations:
Enable complex lags and iterative calculations dependent on the order of data.
Although Tableau is easy to use, we also provide a powerful language backed by a library that can
express complex logic. With calculated fields, you can easily perform arithmetic operations,
express conditional logic, or perform specialized operations on specific data types. Two key
capabilities that enable advanced analysis are Level of Detail (LOD) Expressions and Table Calculations.
A relatively new addition to the calculation language, LOD Expressions have greatly augmented
the power and expressibility of the calculation language. With this new capability, many previously
impossible or challenging scenarios can now be handled with a very simple, concise expression.
LOD Expressions greatly simplify cohort analysis (as described in a previous section) and multi-pass
aggregations. Figure 7 shows the running sum of purchase history for cohorts of customers bucketed by
the quarter of their first purchase. (In the next section on time-series analysis, well look at some of the
other aspects of the calculation language that make this analysis possible.) The chart reveals that the
earliest customers placed the biggest initial orders and remained loyal with subsequent large purchases.
LOD Expressions turn segmentation that would otherwise require complex group-by statements in SQL
into simple, intuitive expressions that are manipulable in Tableaus front-end.

Figure 7: An LOD Expression is used to calculate the running sum of total sales by first quarter of purchase date.

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Table Calculations enable computations that are relative in nature. More specifically, Table Calculations
are computations that are applied to all values in a table, and are often dependent on the table structure
itself. This type of calculations includes many time-series operations such as lags or running sums,
but also computations like ranking and weighted averages.
In Tableau, there are two ways to work with table calculations. The first is a collection of commonly-used
table calculations called Quick Table Calculations. These let you define a table calculation with one click
and are a great place to start. In fact, the running sum in Figure 7 was calculated using Quick Table
Calculations. You can also create your own table calculations using the Table Calculation Functions in
calculation language. These functions give workbook authors the power to precisely manipulate their
result sets. Also, since all Table Calculation are expressible in the calculation language, you can use one
of the Quick Table Calculations as a starting point and edit it manually if you need additional complexity.
With Table Calculations, challenging database worksuch as manipulating aggregated data,
and creating complex lags and data structure-dependent aggregationsrequires just a few clicks
or a simple expression. This both empowers non-technical users and saves experts countless hours
and laborious SQL code.

Figure 8: Down-sampling intraday data reveals possible insights about tipping patterns:
drivers should consider working at night!

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4.

Time-Series Analysis
From sensor readings to stock market prices to graduation rates, much of the worlds data can be
effectively modeled as time series. As such, time is one of the most common independent variables used
in analytics projects. To work well with time series, an analytics platform should support the following:
Seasonality exploration:
Examine seasonal effects with simple, intuitive tools.
Flexible sampling:
Handle the complexities of sampling elegantly.
Intuitive aggregations:
Combine time series in a manner that respects sampling assumptions.
Windowed calculations:
Perform arbitrary computations on previous values.
Relative date filters:
Quickly filter to relevant ranges based on current values.
In Tableau, a flexible front-end and powerful back-end makes time-series analysis a simple matter
of asking the right questions. Analysis starts by just dragging the fields of interest into the view and
beginning the interrogation process. In Figure 8, we are studying the tipping patterns from all the taxi
rides in New York City. We can easily adjust our sampling to find interesting patterns within the data.
With a single click, you can disaggregate the data or view the entire time series sampled by an arbitrary
window. You can quickly change aggregation frequencies to look for seasonality over different timescales
or even view year-over-year or quarter-over-quarter sales growth.

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Leveraging the dual axis feature and discretized aggregation, you can start looking at multiple time
series. In this case, the chart indicates that there may be an inverse relationship between the average
number of rides on a given day and the average tip amount (Figure 9). This certainly could be the result
of random variation or driven by another latent variable, but perhaps the quality of service goes down as
volume increases. Without the ability to quickly inspect time series at different levels of granularity and
aggregation, you might not be able to generate the question.

Figure 9: The dual axes plot shows an inverse relationship between rides and tip amount.

To look at a specific time period, you can filter your data to a set of exact dates or take advantage of
Tableaus relative date filters. With relative date filters, you can look at relative periods, such as last
week or last month. These periods are updated each time you open the view, making them a powerful
tool for reporting.

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When working with time series, its often necessary to smooth or perform other temporal calculations.
Tableau possesses a rich feature set designed to simplify common time-series operations such as
moving averages, year-over-year calculations, and running totals (Figure 10).
As previously discussed, Tableaus Table Calculations feature lets you choose from a common set
of time-series manipulations (Quick Table Calculations) or to use calculation language to write
custom computations.
Since time-series analysis is so common, Tableaus functionality helps finish projects faster and deliver
more value to the organization. The intuitive functionality helps both data experts and business analysts
to ask more and better questions of their data.

Figure 10: This time-series analysis shows the moving average of a stock price.

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5.

Predictive Analysis
Often, after integrating data, forming an initial hypothesis and cleaning up any data quality issues, you
may want to garner further insight by leveraging predictive capabilities. Ideally, you should be able to add
predictive analytics without a large effort so you can explore multiple scenarios quickly. This typically
requires the following capabilities:
Integrated analytics objects:
Analytics objects, such as trend lines and forecasts, should automatically update with the data and
support cohort analysis.
Simple quality metrics:
Quality metrics should be readily accessible for any model.
Advanced predictive capabilities:
Moving beyond simple linear regression should not require complex configuration or coding.
Tableau possesses several native modeling capabilities, including Trending and Forecasting.
You can quickly add a trend line to any chart and view details describing the fit (e.g. p-values and
R-squared) simply by right-clicking on the line. Using Tableaus drag and drop functionality you can
modeling different groups with a single click as trend lines are fully integrated into the front-end and
can be easily segmented. As seen in Figure 11, Tableau automatically creates three trend lines for
the different segments without any code. Tableau also supports several other types of fits, including
logarithmic, polynomial, and exponential.

Figure 11: Trend lines highlight the relationship between height and weight by sport

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As shown in Figure 12, Tableau contains a configurable forecasting ability for time-series data.
By default, Forecasting will run several different models in the background and select the best one,
automatically accounting for data issues such as seasonality. Forecasting in Tableau uses a technique
known as exponential smoothing. Exponential smoothing iteratively forecasts future values of a time series
from weighted averages of past values. As mentioned previously, almost everything about the forecast
is configurable, from the length of the forecast to whether or not to account for seasonality, to the type of
model used (additive or multiplicative).
The feature is also very easy to use, so a novice user can create a forecast with just a few clicks, while an
advanced user can configure almost all aspects of the model. As with trend lines, details of the forecast
quality are available with a single click. In addition to the statistical elements, Tableau provides novice
users an estimate of the forecast quality by displaying confidence intervals. Forecasting also fits in
seamlessly with the rest of Tableau, so you can easily segment and manipulate the forecast as you would
any other analytic object in the UI (Figure 12).

Figure 12: Forecasting automatically predicts sales by region.

Easy predictive analytics adds tremendous value to any data project. By supporting both complex
configuration and simple interactive modeling, a platform can serve both the data scientist
and the end user.

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6.

R Integration
Many organizations have been making investments in analytic platforms and institutional knowledge
for some time; therefore, you may have very specific needs and a valuable corpus of existing work.
Thus, a comprehensive analytics platform must support the ability to integrate with other advanced
analytics technologies, allowing you to expand the possible functionality and leverage existing
investments in other solutions. Supporting the integration with additional technologies enables
the following:
Utilize virtually unlimited choice of methods:
Bring in algorithms and the latest advances from the broader community.
Leverage prior work:
Connect to preexisting logic and models to ensure best institutional practices and avoid
replicating prior work.
Visualize and interrogate model results:
Use an intuitive front-end to help interpret, explore model results, and communicate to your colleagues.
Tableau integrates directly with R to support users with existing models and the leverage the worldwide
statistics community. Tableau can connect to an Rserve process and send data to R via a webAPI.
The results are then returned to Tableau for use by the Tableau visualization engine. This allows a
Tableau user to call any function available in R on data in Tableau and to manipulate models created
in R using Tableau.1

1
Tableau can also read R, SAS, and SPSS data files as a data source. While a complete discussion of data sources is beyond the
scope of this paper, its worth nothing that Tableau can directly connect to the file outputs from several common stats programs.

17

In Figures 13 and 14, you can see some examples in which R is used to compute descriptive statistics on
a data set in Tableau, with Tableau used to visualize the results. Figure 13 is a graphical representation
of correlation coefficients and Figure 14 showcases significance testing.

Figure 13: This correlation matrix utilizes R in Tableau

Chi-square test of independence

Patient

Contingency Table

1,608

High

248

212

1,308

1,768

Medium

205

201

1,225

1,631

Low

250

190

1,280

1,720

Not Specified

215

180

1,277

1,672

1,146

983

6,270

8,399

Days to recover

Regular
Air
1,180

Is Paired
False

Test Type
Two Sided

0
Drug
Placebo
Drug
Placebo
Drug
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Drug
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Drug
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Drug
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Drug
Placebo
Drug
Placebo
Drug
Placebo
Drug
Placebo
Drug
Placebo
Drug
Placebo
Drug
Placebo
Drug
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Drug
Placebo
Drug
Placebo

Express
Air
200

Figure 14: R and Tableau were used to calculate and visualize the results of significance testing
Source: boraberan.wordpress.com/

10

Delivery
Truck
228

Order Priority
Critical

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The modeling can go much deeper than basic statistics. With R integration, you can visualize results from
clustering (Figure 15), optimizations (Figure 16), or multidimensional scaling (Figure 17).
The integration also supports running R code directly inside Tableau. In Figure 16, you can see an optimized
portfolio computed and simulated in R, but visualized in Tableau.

Figure 15: This visualization shows a class k-means clustering example.

Source: tableausoftware.com/about/blog/2013/10/tableau-81-and-r-25327analytics-in-tableau-with-r/

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Figure 16 This visualizes the results of an optimized portfolio.

Source: boraberan.wordpress.com/2014/02/26/prescriptive-analytics-in-tableau-with-r/

Figure 17: These visualizations show the same multidimensional scaling results in two different ways.

Visualizing R results in Tableau often allows the findings to be communicated far more easily to nontechnical audiences. Consider the two visuals below (Figure 17). The image on the left comes from
Wikipedia and shows a classic example of multidimensional scaling to reveal voting patterns.
The second image contains the same results visualized in Tableau on a map. Both tell roughly the same
story, but the map will likely be understood by and appeal to a much broader audience.
The combination of Tableau and R is extremely powerful. You can use Tableaus advanced analytic
capabilities to create segments with derived metadata and pass them to R for further analysis.
Tableau then helps with understanding by automatically visualizing the results from R. This establishes
a feedback loop, which helps refine the model and prompts further questions. The R model becomes
a component of the analytical workflow as opposed to an end point. Interacting with the model becomes
a visual, iterative process.

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Conclusion
In many ways, Tableau stands alone among analytics platforms. Because of our mission to augment
human intelligence, we designed Tableau with both the business user and data scientist in mind.
By staying focused on our mission to empower users to ask interesting questions of their data as quickly
as possible, we built a platform that has valuable functionality for users of all levels.
Tableaus flexible front-end allows business users to ask questions without needing to code or
understand databases. Tableau also has the necessary analytical depth to be a powerful weapon in a
data scientists arsenal. By leveraging sophisticated calculations, R integration, rapid cohort analysis,
and predictive capabilities, data scientists can complete complex analyses in Tableau and easily share
the visual results. Whether you use Tableau for data exploration and quality control, or model design and
testing, the interactive nature of the platform saves countless hours across the lifetime of a project.
By making analysis more accessible and faster to complete at all levels, Tableau drives critical
collaboration and better decision-making throughout time enterprise.

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