Tableau Public Revizited | Feb 18, 2020

As I sat down this afternoon, pondering which viz to feature in this installment of Tableau Public Revizited, my mind began to wander. I peered out the window into the frigid Minnesota temperatures outside, thinking of a place and time much warmer than the current 35-below wind chill. A place with lush green grass, sunshine, water and a warm summer breeze. A place perhaps, just like Chebeague Island, Maine.I’ve loved this viz, by Sue Grist, ever since I laid eyes on it. With its Jonni Walker-esque style it looks like something right out of a travel magazine. Let’s take a look at Sue’s beautiful piece of art.

What makes this great data viz?

• Beautiful Design – This map is so beautiful and I love how Sue sort of floats the text that provide more information about Chebeague Island in the waters surrounding the island. The grayed out shape of Maine with the blue dot representing Chebeague Island is a very nice, subtle extension of the title. I wouldn’t have otherwise known where, in Maine, Chebeague Island is, so this not only looks great, but is very helpful to the reader.
• Use of Color – The yellow dots on the map, indicating summer rentals, are great. I’m not sure how many colors Sue went through before landing on the yellow, but I played around with the viz a little bit and tried several other colors, none of which looked remotely as nice as the yellow she used. Tying the color of the dots to the text is best practice, so nice work there. Another thing Sue did really well was to set the opacity of the yellow dots to 65%. This lightens them up a bit and looks much more professional than if she had left the opacity at 100%. Just look at the difference in the image below.

Left: Opacity set at 65%         |        Right: Opacity set at 100%

• Ease of Use – Ok, we’ve covered the pure beauty of the visualization as well as Sue’s great use of color, but my favorite part about the ‘Maine: Visit Chebeague Island’ viz is the fact that I could see myself actually using it to plan a trip to Chebeague Island! It’s just so damn easy to use. In the bottom left-hand corner, Sue added a collapsible container where you can select your ideal summer rental based on numbers of bedrooms, bathrooms and/or how many people the unit sleeps. And then, while hovering over the yellow dots, we get a preview of the rental with the ability to navigate to the rental’s website, where we could book a trip right then and there.

So, which Chebeague Island rental was my favorite? Well, I’m glad you asked. I’d have to go with the Hackel Beach House at 47 Jenks Road. For me, this rental won out for several reasons, including its easy access to the beach and huge yard which is ideal for games like bean bags, croquet, bocce ball, etc. I also love the long deck that overlooks the ocean as well as the tongue and groove interior, which really gives it that cabin feel. Lastly, I definitely saw a fire pit in one of the pictures and you simply cannot have a summer cabin getaway without a bonfire to end the night!! While there’s plenty to do around the Hackel Beach House itself, biking around the island and ending up at the Slow Bell Cafe for lunch sounds like a good time. And when the kids are napping, maybe sneaking in a round of golf at the Great Chebeague Golf Club 🙂

It was a lot of fun exploring this viz in detail, Sue. Great job!

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Tableau Public Revizited | Feb 4 , 2020

For the third installation of Tableau Public Revizited, we’re looking back at a powerful viz created by Kaleigh Piscioneri just over a year ago, on January 30, 2019. In her viz Kaleigh does an exceptional job breaking down the gender gap in sports. Let’s look at a few elements of this visualization that make it so effective.

What makes this great data viz?

• Use of Color – I absolutely love the colors Kaleigh uses in this viz and the faded gray is a perfect compliment to let that red really pop, grabbing the reader’s attention. The red is a powerful color to use here and is simple to understand. Anytime we see red in the viz, we know that color is associated with women, as Kaleigh ties it into the quote at the top of the page, as well as in a couple of other places. I can’t imagine a better use of color to tell this story. In my opinion, Kaleigh nails it!

• Chart Selection – The stacked horizontal bar charts at the top of the viz are nice as they do two things, aiding in the telling of the story while also separating the title from the rest of the visualization.
  • Unit Charts – The main focal point of the viz, Kaleigh’s use of the side-by-side unit charts is brilliant. The charts help drive home the disparity in earnings of professional male and female athletes better than any other chart Kaleigh could have placed here. We can quickly see that in 2017, of the Top 100 highest paid professional athletes in the world, just one was a woman. And in 2018, zero were women.
  • Donuts – Below the unit charts, Kaleigh looks more in depth at the difference in male to female average salary in three sports; basketball, soccer and tennis. The difference in basketball, where the average female salary is 1.3% that of the average male salary, is staggering to see visually. While soccer is not much better, tennis has far and away the smallest gap of the three sports. I like the use of donuts here, as it allows Kaleigh to add the KPIs in the center, while also including the background image to help the reader understand which sport is which.
• Tooltips – Upon first seeing the side-by-side unit charts, your initial thought is likely that you’re interested in knowing which athletes represent each of the dots. It’s a perfect use case for tooltips and Kaleigh does a great job of including more detail, as the reader hovers over a mark. While hovering on a mark, we can see that the female athlete who shows up in the 2017 Top 100 is Serena Williams. Name, rank, gender, sport, country and salary are all included in a very clean, compact layout. Nicely done! 

Exploring the viz – I was particularly interested to see which NBA players would show up each year. The reason being is that in 2015 the NBA salary cap was around $63 million, meaning each team could spend that amount of money on their roster, before being hit with penalties/taxes, if they exceeded that amount. By 2017, in large part to new TV deals, the cap had jumped to just north of $94 million, an increase of $31 million dollars from where it was in 2015. This led to teams over-spending on mid-level (average in terms of talent) free agents in 2017 and 2018, as they had the cap space to burn. Knowing this, I wanted to see how many of those mid-level players made the Top 100. After exploring the viz, I found five players who fit this description; Harrison Barnes, Chandler Parsons, Nic Batum, Steven Adams and Otto Porter Jr. were all among the Top 100, despite none of them ever being selected to an NBA All-Star game. While Batum and Parsons were making eight figures even before their new, free agent deals, the average salary of Barnes, Adams and Porter Jr. jumped from $4.3 million to an astonishing $23.1 million. Nothing like getting a near 600% raise for being just ok at your job!

Overall, I feel Kaleigh does a wonderful job of combining the elements we covered, to bring attention to this glaring gender gap in the earnings of professional athletes. Great viz, Kaleigh!