You are now ready to set out on a journey of building advanced visualizations. Advanced does not necessarily mean difficult. Tableau makes it easy to create them. Advanced also does not necessarily mean complex. The goal is to communicate the data, not obscure it with needless complexity.

Instead, these visualizations are advanced in the sense that you will need to understand when they should be used, why they are useful, and how to leverage the capabilities of Tableau to create them. Additionally, many of the examples introduce some advanced techniques, such as calculations, to extend the usefulness of foundational visualizations. Many of these techniques will be developed more in future chapters, so don't worry about trying to absorb every detail.

Most of the examples in this chapter are designed so that you can follow along. However, don't simply memorize a set of instructions. Instead, take time to understand how the combinations of different field types that you place on different shelves change the way headers, axes, and marks are rendered. Experiment and even deviate from the instructions from time to time just to see what else is possible. You can always use Tableau's back button to return to following the example.

Visualizations in this chapter will fall under the following major categories:

• Comparing values across different dimensions
• Visualizing dates and times
• Relating parts of the data to the whole
• Visualizing distributions
• Visualizing multiple axes to compare different measures

You will notice the lack of a spatial location or geographic category in the preceding list. Mapping was introduced in Chapter 1, Creating Your First Virtualizations and Dashboards and we'll cover some advanced geographic capabilities in Chapter 10, Advanced Visualizations, Techniques, Tips, and Tricks.

The complete examples are included in the Chapter 03 workbook. You can also use the data sources in that workbook to work through the examples on your own.