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FarmVille and Mafia Wars seem simple enough, click a few buttons and then wait for your crops to grow or stamina to regenerate, but under the hood is a wealth of user analytics that has to be parsed and sorted to keep Zynga is business.  They’ve just decided to use Tableau Software to parse all this data.

“With the amount of data Zynga captures daily, our rapid-fire business intelligence and business analytics capabilities match Zynga’s analytical prowess uniquely,” said Tableau’s CEO and co-founder Christian Chabot.  “With Tableau, Zynga can unearth vast amounts of user data in real-time, which will enable them to quickly make product decisions focused on creating the best social gaming experience.”

Congratulations to Tableau for scoring this huge contract! Full press release after the break

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Science bi, tableau, zynga

The ReadWriteWeb and Tableau Public challenge is over and the victor has been named: Rina Bongsu-Petersen and her visualization of U.S. Obesity Data.  The judges, including ReadWriteWeb’s co-editor Marshall kirkpatrick, had this to say:

“This entry was able to provide strong analysis with a view of the data that fits the subject, and the result is an incredible story anyone can discover,” Mackinlay said. “People will look at it, immediately select their state and see relevant results.”

See the visualization after the break.

via ReadWriteWeb and Tableau Announce Winner of Data Visualization Contest.

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Science contest, tableau

The University of Washington hosted TEDx Seattle today, and now their Master’s of Communication in Digital Media department (MCDM) is awarding their first “Digital Disruptor” award to Tableau Software for their Tableau Public software.  The award is given to any local entity that pushes communication with innovative technology solutions, looking to identify “seismic shifts” caused by the digital media revolution.

“As an application that facilitates the use of data visualization in websites and blogs, I see ‘Tableau Public’ as the YouTube of storytelling through data,” said Hanson Hosein, the MCDM’s Director.  ”Societal demand for transparency calls for more disclosure from our major institutions in the form of data.  Tableau’s platform allows us to digest that information and share it with others.  It was obvious to me that we should recognize Tableau for this major development, as we all seek to make sense of communication in the ‘Data Age.’”

Congratulations to Tableau!  Read the full release after the break.

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Science award, software, tableau, ted

The blog Information Advantage has posted an article describing their entry into the Interactive Graph Contest sponsored by ReadWriteWeb and Tableau Public. Using Tableau, they have a several nice data visualizations of public health by counties in the United States. Of course, it is interactive, so if you find some of it a little bit cluttered, you can always turn off some of the States, or zoom into a specific region.

Amongst all of the available choices, we decided to participate with a piece of analysis on “Activity Rates and Healthy Living Data”, for three specific reasons–

1. The contest reinforces our strong belief that effective visualization backed by solid analytics is the future of executive decision making.

2. Given the recent developments in health reform, this data presented a very interesting business and social challenge from an impact perspective.

3. We wanted to share our thinking and approach around challenging business and social problems where there is a nontrivial amount of data available and an opportunity to leverage advanced analytics and data visualization techniques.

via Data Visualization: Activity Rates & Healthy Living Across US Counties.

Graphics data visualization, tableau

Tableau has another great graphic showing the distribution of votes in the recently passes Healthcare bill.  Up top you see their geographic map showing the distribution of uninsured patients and voting delegation, and below that is a collection of graphs adding in information on campaign contributions.

After much deliberation, fighting, infighting and some rather intense partisan antics, the House passed the health care reform bill Sunday. It is hard to think of a subject more controversial in American society today and the voting behind the bill proves it. If you have any interest in the subject, you can download the workbook and use the data to see the story from your own point of view.

See the chart after the break.

via Healthcare bill will most benefit those who did not vote for it | Tableau Software.
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Science health, interactive, tableau

Tableau Software has taken their new Tableau Public and used it to compile the March Madness data into an interactive combination of a scatter chart and bar graph.

March Madness is here! Like millions of Americans, I sat down today and realized I had no idea who was going to come out on top. Who honestly has time to be an expert on every team that has a chance? I mean, North Iowa? Luckily, stats are readily available from the NCAA and I downloaded the offensive and defensive FG % to make this comparison tool.

See the actual visualization after the break.

via March Madness Comparison Tool | Tableau Software.
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Science interactive, ncaa, sports, tableau

Contestants, dig out your visualization textbooks and prepare for a new contest from ReadWriteWeb and Tableau.  Download one of their preselected datasets, create an impressive visualization with Tableau Public, and have a chance to win an all-expenses paid trip to the Web2.0 EXPO and $500 cash.

ReadWriteWeb and Tableau Public have teamed up to challenge you to our first interactive “graph” contest. Tableau Public makes it so that anyone can make their blog or website standout with an interactive viz (visualization). The question is…will you be the one who publishes a viz so engaging and so smart that you rock our panel of viz and blogging experts? If you are, you’ll win big!

Full rules and instructions are on their site.

via The ReadWriteWeb And Tableau Public Challenge | Tableau Public.

Science contest, tableau

Sensing they may have stumbled onto something powerful, CBS Sports has partnered with Tableau Software to create a whole slew of new interactive visualization products for fantasy baseball and football fans.  But just new visualizations isn’t all, they’ve issued a Call for Ideas to the community to see what new information you want!

Not only will the visuals you see be easy to understand and interpret, but they will also be interactive, allowing users to see exactly what they want while filtering out data not useful to them. We hope you enjoy our latest enhancement to help you win your league in 2010. What are your thoughts on the new feature? What visualizations might you like to see? We’d like to hear your thoughts and suggestions.

A big win for Tableau certainly, and could be a huge tool for fantasy fans (the hardcore fantasy fans spend as much time crunching statistics and numbers as most PhD physicists).  What would you like to see?

via Fantasy Baseball – Bringing Fantasy statistics to life in 2010 : FantasyNews.CBSSports.com.

Science cbs, sports, tableau

Those of you looking for a free data visualization and analysis tool and found Google Fusion Tables lacking have a new tool to check out : Tableau Public.

“Imagine if online data was as fun and accessible as online video,” said Christian Chabot, Tableau’s CEO and co-founder. “We created this product because we want to make data a first class citizen on the web. We want to change the way people interact with data online by letting them tell stories with flexibility and beauty.”

Already getting rave reviews from the folks in the beta, perhaps most notably Robert Kosara (eagereyes) who has been using it to visualize the massive Climate dataset released recently, it’s now freely available for the world to try via their website Tableaupublic.com.  For some inspiration of how you can use it, check out Brad Feld’s visualization of his running data in the MIT Technology Review and the Funding Breakdown for the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation.

See the full press release after the break, along with a sample visualization of The 2009 Investments of the Top 100 VC firms, from CrunchBase data..

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Science free, interactive, software, tableau, visualization

Fantasy Sports fans live in the world of numbers and statistics, making the data they work with perfect for visualization.  CBS Sport’s Jamey Eisenberg has an article up covering how 2009 went down in Fantasy NFL events, and visualizes some of the data using Tableau.

As you can see with the interactive visualization below, we have a breakdown of the players that ended up with the highest winning percentage for Fantasy owners this past season. You can also see how their win percentage compared to their average draft position and how they did each week based on their Fantasy points in a standard-scoring league.

via Who were the big winners in 2009? – NFL Who were the big winners in 2009? : FantasyNews.CBSSports.com.

Science interactive, nfl, sports, tableau, visualization