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Data Storytelling and Data Viz Approach

For this week's dataset, I wanted to use a timeline. I've done the curvy timeline a few times, so decided to go with a standard linear timeline, but wanted to provide the user a way to filter the timeline down to specific points in time. Also, I wanted to be able to visually indicate which part of the full time period was filtered.

The basic timeline was a dual axis chart, based on the date the President took office. The first axis is a Gannt chart, with the size of the bar based on the duration of the presidency. The other axis is a circle, to draw attention to the beginning of the presidency. On this sheet, I added a filter on the date the President took office as I mentioned above.

I then duplicated the sheet removed the filter (renamed as Mini BG), played with the size and most importantly, fixed the axis to include the full timespan of US Presidents. I duplicated the sheet again, (renamed as Mini) and applied my date filter to the sheet. I removed the color from my Mini BG sheet and on my dashboard floated the two sheets (with transparent backgrounds) so that the colored view would correspond with the larger filtered viz below.

I took an identical approach to create a quick view of the number of Presidents and total time in office by political party. Overall, I'm really happy with how the viz turned out. The extra effort to float the sheets was worth the vizual.

We'd really love to see what you can do with this week's dataset! Download the data and see what you can visualize. Create your viz and post your work to Tableau Public and Twitter with the hashtag #ThrowbackDataThursday, tagging @TThrowbackThurs. We're really looking forward to seeing what the Tableau Community can come up with!

Data Source

This week's dataset comes from Wikipedia. Please be sure to cite the source on your viz.