Click here to download this week's dataset as a CSV

Click here to download this week's dataset as a Hyper Extract

Historical Background

I'll keep this writeup short. Turkey has been a traditional part of Thanksgiving celebrations in the United States since around the time that President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863. There are stories that the Pilgrims consumed turkey in the fall of 1621 at a harvest celebration that is considered to be the first Thanksgiving, however there are no definitive records stating so.

It is plausible, especially since turkeys are native only to the Americas, though there are several other game animals that the colonists would have also been able to hunt. Regardless, turkey has been respected and consumed in the United States since the time of the colonies, with Bejamin Franklin actually campaigning for turkey to be the national bird of the infant United States.

This week, we're looking at turkey production statistics from 1984 to 2017. For the short week, it's a pretty simple dataset, but there are sure to be some interesting insights hiding in the data. Download the data and see what you can do. Create your viz and post your work to Tableau Public and Twitter with the hashtag #ThrowbackDataThursday, tagging @TThrowbackThurs. We'd really love to see what you can come up with!

Most of all, Happy Thanksgiving!

Data Source

This week's dataset comes from the USDA Economic Research Service. Please be sure to cite the source on your viz.