Use Tableau Desktop’s Maps More Effectively

Contributed by: Carl Allchin

Difficulty level: Intermediate

Most people love maps, and when coupled with data visualization techniques, maps can convey a lot of complex information simply. Trying to articulate location proximity without using a map is difficult to do with other charts and makes your audience work hard to find the key insights in the data. Like with most other charting types, you need to be careful not to overload your audience with too much information because you risk that they’ll miss the fundamental message you are trying to convey with the chart.

Basic mapping in Tableau will often communicate the points clearly to your audience. You can use two main forms of data visualization on maps in Tableau: choropleth maps and shape maps.

Choropleth Maps

Choropleth maps use the geographical area of a country, state, or county and colors the area of this object based on a value formed from your dataset. In the example, we’ve double-clicked on the State field in the Superstore dataset and then dropped Sales on to the Color part of the Marks card. Depending on the version of Superstore you’re using, you might need to filter to just the United States by placing Country on the Filters shelf. This map, showing the total sales value in each state, is the result.

Figure 0.

You can see from this map that sales are highest in ...