hi there, and welcome to viz talk, our placefor talking about tableau visualizations. my name is dan, and i'm lori, and we're dataanalysts, here at tableau software. today we're going to take a look at a vizfrom matt lee, who has graciously allowed us to just, discuss his viz, see what we like about it,see what we'd like to see improved
apple market symbol, let's actually just go ahead and take a lookright now. so, matt's viz is showing us a comparisonbetween the stock prices of microsoft and apple. so the first thing i look for is, what storyis the viz telling me.
what jumps out at me in this viz is that apple,the orange line below, is going up like gangbusters. and since that's the first piece that drewmy eye, that tells me that that view is the most important and it should probably be inthe most prominent location, which is at the top. yeah, i agree. i think the heat map that'sin the middle is actually really interesting, because you can really see how microsoft'sstock was a lot stronger earlier, and apple's stock is a lot stronger now. but it's a little bit redundant and isn'tas powerful as the time series at the bottom, so i'd actually get rid of the heat map altogether.
lori, what do you think about the call-outsat the top? you know, i really like the idea of the call-outs,the textual information that jumps out with really big numbers. but what i would like to see is the currentstock price. that's the number that's most important to me. you know, maybe secondary and possibly smallerfont size, would be the minumum, the lowest stock price and the max stock price. let's go ahead and take a look at the thirdtab. i like both of these views, you can really again see the change in the stock price, butthis viz seems to be about comparing apple
and microsfot, and having a filter that switchesbetween the two defeats that purpose. i agree. i'd like to see the filter removedand so you can compare apple and microsoft directly. so i want to go back to the story part a bit,and let's go back to the first tab we were looking at. as i said before, i think that this bottomview, the blue and orange lines is the most important one. one thing i'd like to see explored,is these peaks down here. i'd like to know if these are meaningful peaks. that to mewould bring out more of the story. do the peaks for apple match up to when theyreleased new products? do the declines for
microsoft come at important times in theirhistory? i think it'd be a really good use case forreference lines. around 2007 for apple is when their iphone released, and you can seeif we put a line right here, you'll be able to tell this is when the iphone started andtheir stock price has risen ever since. yeah, you could do reference lines, or youcould also do that with, it would work well with annotations. yeah, annotations are another great way tomark history points on timelines. i think personally, i would also like to seeapple compared with other big tech giants, you know ibm, hp, just to show how apple hasgrown gangbusters compared with everybody.
let us know what you think about matt's viz.leave us a comment, or visit us in the viztalk forum in the description below. want to see your viz on viztalk? send us alink, at social@tableausoftware.com
