Carol Harris

Tableau is a user-friendly digital tool that allows you analyze and visualize data in multiple ways, using techniques such as graphs, charts, scatterplots and geospatial maps. This was my first time interacting with tableau as a creator. At my place of work there are a plethora of dashboards created using Tableau. As such I frequently interact with Tableau as an end user. Furthermore, being able to create interactive dashboards is one of the biggest advantages of Tableau, particularly as it relates to business intelligence.  

One of my favorite things to do on Saturdays is to visit the farmers market at Grand Army Plaza. Farmers market is a way to get fresh produce while interacting with and supporting local farmers. I grew up on a small island in the Caribbean. My dad was a fisherman, and my mom grew vegetables and flowers in our garden. On Saturday’s folks on the island would come together at a designated spot, the nexus of town. Folks would sell and buy the goods. It was also an opportunity for interaction with friends and family. When my family and I go to different parts of New York state we search for farmers market and if one was conveniently located, we would visit it. This got me thinking about where the farmers markets are located across New York. I was able to pull data on the farmers market in New York state from the Data.gov website. https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/farmers-markets-in-new-york-state . It’s an uncomplicated data file that list the address of farmers markets by counties, cities and zip codes for New York State. The file also includes their website address and whether they accept SNAP as payment. It turns out there are approximately 646 farmers markets across New York. Importing the data into Tableau was straightforward. This data was in a CSV file and Tableau can import a variety of different file formats. Once the data comes into Tableau it automatically decides what variable type to assign. Interestingly, Tableau is able to assign geospatial data as such from a string variable. So, you don’t need to have longitude and latitude if you are using state, city or zip code data. You do need to be careful though because if you just include the county without the state Tableau may give you some unknown or null field for that county. Once you have ascertained that the variables have been correctly labeled the next step is to create a worksheet where you can essentially drag and drop fields. Tableau will give you an instant preview. It’s interactive so you can play around until you are satisfied with the outcome.

Using a map to represent this data made it easier to see where the markets are located geographically. I could have made a table of counts to show which country had the most farmers’ markets. But that wouldn’t situate the location of the markets across the state like a map does.  That was the biggest advantage to me. Even using a bar chart wouldn’t have give the entire picture.