How To Prepare For Tableau Interview

What Is A Scatter Plot What Types Of Data Work Best In Scatter Plots

A scatter plot is a type of chart thats used to show correlation between two or more variables. Typically, its best used when there isnt a time element, and can help to show the relationship between the variables, e.g. positive, negative or no correlation. For example, a scatter plot would be an effective choice to show the relationship between height and weight.

What Formats Can We Download Views Or Workbooks From The Server

The download formats available to you depend on permissions granted by Tableau content owners and site administrators.

Image: Downloads an image of the view in a .png format.

Data: Opens a new tab in the browser window and displays the views data in summary and detail. You can then download the data as a comma-separated value file.

Crosstab: Downloads the view, or the selected sheet in a dashboard, as a .csv file you can open in Microsoft Excel.

PDF: Downloads a PDF of selected sheets. If youre downloading a dashboard to PDF format, web page objects arent included.

Tableau Workbook: Downloads a workbook you can open with Tableau Desktop.

Note: Downloading extremely large amounts of data can affect server performance and might not complete successfully. If you encounter these issues, try exporting the data directly from the underlying data source.

Explain Types Of Filters In Tableau Quick Global Context At Source On Dimensions And Measures

Quick Filter: Quick Filter Creates an interactive selection panel on the right top corner of the data view. We can implement Quick Filter on Dimensions or Measures. The interactive selection panel provides the options based on the source data.

Example: Quick Filer on Order Date with Yearly Consolidation provides the list of YEARS available from SOURCE DATA for user selection.

Global Filter: Global Filter helps to share the same filter using the same source data across multiple all worksheets within a workbook. We can apply a global filter for all the worksheets using the same data It can be applied to only selected worksheets.

Example: Filter with Complex calculation in one worksheet can be applied to some other worksheet which using the same source data to avoid repetitive work.

Context Filter: Context Filter helps to pass the criteria of the filter from one level to another related level.

Example: Top 10 Customers in the country by their purchases here the context is Top 10. We can pass this context to know Top 10 Customers by Purchases in a State within the same country.

Filter at Source: After connecting with the data source, filtering the data before getting into the worksheet is called filtering at the source. This helps in improved performance because the unwanted data eliminated.

Example: Selecting only one year worth of data from a few years of historical data after connecting with the source

Example: Filter on Sum of Sales.

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What Is The Difference Between Filter And Parameter

A filter acts directly on a dimension or measure and restricts the domain of the field. For example, to only show California or New York in a State dimension or only show Sales between $100 and $200. There are a lot of options for filters. You can include or exclude members of a dimension, use a wildcard for the member name, choose the top N, given another measure, or use a condition to choose what is in and what is out.

A parameter, like is a variable. You can then use that variable inside calculations to change the calculation. If you filter by a calculated field, you essentially have a parameter controlling a filter. Parameters have almost the same UI options like filters, but they are single-valued, so you have options for radio buttons, but not checkboxes. There are also sliders and drop downs. Parameters are global, so can affect calculations for all data sources and connections in a workbook.

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Most Frequently Asked Tableau Interview Questions:

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2. What are Measures and Dimensions?

Ans:

Measures:

• These are the numeric metrics or measurable quantities of the data, it cannot be analyzed by a dimension table.
• Measures are stored in a table that contains foreign keys which refer uniquely to the associated dimension tables.
• The table supports data storage at the atomic level and hence it allows more number of records to be inserted at one time. Example: A sales table can have a product key, customer key, promotion key, items sold, which refers to a specific event.

Dimensions:

• These are the descriptive attribute values for multiple dimensions of each attribute that define multiple characteristics.
• A dimension table, having reference to a product key form the table, can consist of product name, product type, size, colour, description, etc.

3. What is the difference between .twb and .twbx extension?

Ans:

.twb:

A .twb is an XML document which contains all the selections and layout which are made in your Tableau workbook. It does not contain any data.

.twbx:

A .twbx is a zipped archive that contains a .twb and any external files such as extracts and background images.

4. What is the difference between Tableau Worksheet, Dashboard, Story, and Workbook?

Ans:

Dashboard: It is a collection of views from multiple worksheets.

Live:

Extract:

Extracts:

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What Is A Bar Chart

A bar chart visualizes data as a set of rectangular bars, their lengths being proportional to the values they represent. The horizontal axis shows the values, and the vertical axis shows the categories they belong to.

So, the bar chart is a vertical version of the column chart. In multi-series bar charts, values are grouped by categories. They are also preferred when the category names are long or also to show ranking.

What Are Different Ways Of Connecting Data

You can connect Live or as an Extract. It depends on the project requirements.

In general, if the business needs up to the minute/ live data updates to the dashboard, we use Live connections. But it comes with performance impact due to constant expensive data refresh operations.

In all other cases, extracts are preferred. Extract files are a local copy of a subset or entire data source that you can use to share data, work offline, and improve database performance. They can be scheduled to run at off-peak hours avoiding slow load times.

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What Is The Blended Axis

With a blended axis, you can show the multiple measures within a single axis, and all the marks are specified in a single pane.

• With the blended axis, you will be able to drag a dimension in a column
• You can drag the first measure in the column
• You can drag the second measure in the existing axis
• Us/multiplemeasures_blendedaxes.html

For Success In The Future Of Work Organizations Expand Their Definition Of Data Literacy Invest In Their People And Double

Wendy Turner-Williams

Wendy Turner-Williams manages Tableaus Enterprise Data Strategy, Data Platforms and Services, Data Governance and Management Maturity, Data Risk, and Data Literacy. She and her team are fueling data-driven business innovation, transformation, and operational excellence at Tableau. Wendy has 20+ years of management experience across sectors, most recently leading the Information Management & Strategy Enterprise program at Salesforce.

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Top Tableau Interview Questions You Must Prepare In 2021

The art and practice of visualizing data is becoming ever more important in bridging the human-computer gap to mediate analytical insight in a meaningful way. Edd Dumbill

In this Tableau interview questions blog, I have collected the most frequently asked questions by interviewers. These questions are collected after consulting with top industry experts in the field of Data analytics and visualization.

In case you have attended a Tableau interview in the recent past, do paste those Tableau interview questions in the comments section and well answer them ASAP. You can also comment below if you have any questions in your mind which you might face in your Tableau interview.

This Tableau interview question is divided into the following parts:

• Beginners level

Lets begin this Tableau Interview Questions with Beginners level questions first.

What Are Different Tableau Products

Tableau like other BI tools has a range of products:

• Tableau Desktop: Desktop product is used to create optimized queries out from pictures of data. Once the queries are ready, you can perform those queries without the need to code. Tableau desktop encompasses data from various sources into its data engine and creates an interactive dashboard.
• Tableau Server: When you have published dashboards using Tableau Desktop, Tableau servers help in sharing them throughout the organization. It is an enterprise-level feature that is installed on a Windows or Linux server.
• Tableau Reader: Tableau Reader is a free feature available on Desktop that lets you open and views data visualizations. You can filter or drill down the data but restricts editing any formulas or performing any kind of actions on it. It is also used to extract connection files.
• Tableau Online: Tableau online is also a paid feature but doesnt need exclusive installation. It comes with the software and is used to share the published dashboards anywhere and everywhere.
• Tableau Public: Tableau public is yet another free feature to view your data visualizations by saving them as worksheets or workbooks on Tableau Server.

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Q What Are The Disadvantages Of Context Filters

Here are some of the disadvantages of context filter in tableau-

• The context filter is not frequently changed by the user. If the filter is changed, the database must recompute, and the temporary table will be recreated which will slow down the performance.
• When you set a dimension to context, Tableau creates a temporary table that will require a reload each time the view is initiated. If you are working on any database then you must have the permission to create the temporary table.

Tableau Software Engineer Interview Questions

36. What does Tableau’s analytics pane give us?

The analytic pane in Tableau gives us the ability to access our everyday analytics objects easily. It allows dragging trend lines, references, outliers, forecasts, and other elements from the analytics pane.

37. Explain the steps to connect to a custom SQL query within Tableau.

The steps to connect to a custom SQL query within Tableau are:

38. How can you view a SQL file generated by Tableau Desktop?

The developer or software engineer can click the My Tableau Repository folder by navigating the My documents from the PC. Here, the developer can find the SQL file. If the developer or the software engineer uses the live connection to the data source, they must check for the log.txt or tabprotosrv.txt files to witness the Tableau-generated SQL.

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Q8 Why Should One Use Tableau

A few of the various reasons to use Tableau are:

• If you use Tableau, you get various free offerings for academic distribution.
• Whether your data is in a database, open-premise, data warehouse, Excel file, or in a cloud application, you can analyze it with the help of Tableau.
• You can create views of your data and share them with your partners, colleagues, and customers.
• You can also use Tableau to blend it with other data.
• You can use Tableau to keep data up-to-date automatically.

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Vidya Setlur

Vidya Setlur is the Tableau Research Director, leading a team of research scientists in areas including data visualization, multimodal interaction, statistics, applied ML, and NLP. She earned her doctorate in Computer Graphics in 2005 at Northwestern University. Vidya previously worked as a principal research scientist at the Nokia Research Center. Her research combines concepts from information retrieval, human perception, and cognitive science to help users effectively interact with systems in their environment.

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Excellent Tableau Interview Questions You Should Prepare

Tableau is an intelligent business solution which provides an exceptionally effective data visualization platform to make business presentations attractive. An individual working with Tableau needs to be qualified and highly-skilled to make the most of the features provided by Tableau and efficiently prepare dashboards. Tableau dashboards can be designed in a number of ways, and there are many possibilities and options available for a professional to create the most suitable dashboard as per the business requirement. Apply for tableau online training in hyderabad to learn more.

Thus, the Tableau practitioner must have relevant knowledge and skills in this field. Employers will make sure that the one they are hiring is capable or not. Given below are some of the questions that you should prepare for cracking the Tableau interview in the first go itself:

• How is Tableau better than other products?

• What is Tableau extract? What are its advantages?

• Explain all the products of Tableau?

You need to mention what are those products and then begin with the explanation. Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online, Tableau Reader, and Tableau Public are the five main products you need to mention. Then take each and explain one by one.

• Which version of Tableau have you worked on?

• What are the different data types in Tableau?

• Explain what Tableau dashboards are?

• What do you think about the improvements in Tableau? State some ways by which the Tableau performance can be improved?

What Types Of Applications Need Data Measurements

The interviewer may also want to observe your analytical reasoning and how well you organize your work when introducing additional data to a managed system. You can explain how you handle data organization and management, leveraging Tableau’s parameter features in your answer. The following sample can assist you in refining your response.

Example:”Data measurements are more appropriate for differentiating numerical and quantitative data. In my previous role, I assisted the senior analyst in using measurements to collect and display vital financial data. My implementation of unique measurement tags in the program helped sort total revenue, profits, expenses, and estimations.”

Please note that none of the companies, institutions, or organizations mentioned in this article are affiliated with Indeed.

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What Is A Tde File

TDE stands for Tableau Desktop its a file that has a .tde extension. This file stores the data extracted from external sources such as MS Excel, MS Access, and others. Below we have mentioned some aspects of the TDE file that makes it more suitable for supporting analytics and data discovery:

• TDE is a store that stores the data in columns.
• Another important aspect is that TDEs are architecture aware which means that TDEs will use all the parts of your computer memory from RAM to hard disk and utilize every part while working.

State The Components Of The Dashboard

The dashboard consists of 5 components.

• Web: it consists of a web page embedded in the dashboard.
• Horizontal component: it is a horizontal layout container in which we can add objects.
• Vertical component: it is a vertical layout container in which we can add objects.
• Image Extract: it allows you to upload an image to the dashboard from a computer.
• Text: it is a small Wordpad where we can format and edit the text.

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What Is The Difference Between A Live Connection And Extracts

Extracts are pre-queried data that has been saved so that it is optimized for Tableau aggregation. It is only up to date when the extract has been created or when it is subsequently updated.

Live connections query the data source when needed. As this is not optimized for Tableau aggregation, it can be slower and requires network activity when the live connection query takes place.

Tableau Online generally uses data extracts only. However, Tableau has been adding live connections for certain cloud databases.

I hope that you have enjoyed these interview questions. If any of the data visualization questions have left you stumped, then I hope that you will consider filling in the gap by joining me on my Tableau course.

How Do You Integrate Embedded Data When Using The Program

This question can help interviewers understand how you sort and organize data from multiple internal sources. Show the interviewer your expertise by describing the various embedded sources of data to create individual workbooks for teams to access and use. Consider the example to help you form your response.

Example:”Embedded data contains the connected information within the various files, workbooks, dashboards and tables in the system. Because this information is already accessible, I can simply establish additional connections between existing data and new information teams input into the system. This process makes using embedded data more efficient, as it already exists and can accept updates and changes in real-time.”

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What Is A Density Map How Is It Different From Other Types Of Maps

A density map shows points on a map, based on the data. However, there may be several points on top of each other. In that case, a density map would allow the points to change color. This shows the increased density of the points.

Other types of maps show the data graphically as follows:

• They could show points of the same color, but perhaps with bubbles of different sizes.
• They could have areas such as states colored according to their size.

Explain The Level Of Detail Expression In Tableau

You can use the LOD expression for running the complex queries that include more than a single dimension at the data source level rather than bringing all the data to the Tableau interface.

Consider the following example:

We have shown the scales for the Furniture category and its sub-categories. Now looking at the sales for the furniture as a whole, rather than focusing on its sub-categories, you need to remove the sub-category from the calculation field as shown below.

Now, the visualization looks as shown below.

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