Tableau
What I knew before
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I knew that Tableau was a company that did data visualization, however I was not entirely clear on what that meant/ what they really did
Introduction and Expectations
Tableau takes big data and makes it easy to work with. They recognize that big data is the future of business, and they do everything they can to make working with data as easy as possible for their customers. As they put it, they organize big data sets to be able to see better, in turn creating data driven organizations.
Because I did not really know anything about the company and I had not ever heard of them, I did not really come in with any expectations.
Visit Summary
Tableau had a beautiful office space consisting of enormous kitchens, game rooms, and modern office spaces. They toured us around the space before leading us to a large conference room where we talked with two UMD alums who worked for Tableau. As previously mentioned, their whole model is based around letting businesses make faster decisions by using data. The scope of Tableau Software is immense; it is used at virtually every level of the government in all 50 states, by major companies, as well as universities.
The most memorable part of the visit for me was being able to see Tableau in action. While there, one of the employees showed us data visualization for his Facebook page. He was able to sort and organize the data in a variety of formats and orders, even showing a scatter plot of data and length, then being able to hover over different dots to view the original post. Once every year, we saw a straight vertical line with high activity. By hovering over dots on that line, we quickly learned that these lines represented birthdays, which always experience increased social media involvement. This example showed me the real practicality of the software, and how valuable it really could be for a business trying to make data-driven decisions.
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Key Takeaways
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Tableau has an immensely large market that is only going to grow.
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Data visualization is going to become mainstream with any company that wants to make data-driven decisions. I have been learning more and more about big data in Information Systems, and this has given me a new perspective on just how valuable big data is, and how companies can use big data to make decisions.
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In Information Systems, where we are learning about big data and Excel, after seeing how difficult it can be to manipulate, clean, and work with big data, the value of Tableau was so much more significant to me. Professor Karake told us that a Microsoft data analyst once told her that his department spends 80% of their time cleaning data, so if Tableau can reduce this time spent on cleaning and increase time spent in other sectors, they can make businesses more efficient and profitable.
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Post Visit Actions/ Thoughts
After the visit, I connected with Jenny Olson on LinkedIn. The visit made me think about a career in data analytics because I was so interested in their product and what they could offer, in addition to recognizing the importance of big data.