Finding data that you personally find interesting is key to getting to grips with Tableau and creating dashboards that you are passionate about. This blog highlights useful sources of inspiration, reliable datasets and ways AI can assist you.
Inspiration
Tableau Public: An amazing source of inspiration for pretty much all topics. Make sure to reference any viz that you take inspiration from. Additionally, most vizzes will highlight where the data is sourced from. If you are very inspired by someone’s dashboard, I would suggest aiming to recreate only your favourite components of that dashboard (rather than the whole thing). At the end of the day, it’s more impressive (and cooler) to be different and unique whilst putting your own spin on things.
News and Media: Data-driven journalism from organisations such as The Economist/The FT/The Athletic helped me see how data is used in real-world storytelling. They are great for providing ideas and topics to explore, especially in sport (football!) and current affairs.
Websites for data
Data is everywhere online. However, these are the sources I had most success with finding reliable, complete data and are easy to navigate.
Kaggle: https://www.kaggle.com/
Makeover Monday: https://makeovermonday.co.uk/
^ Weekly datasets designed specifically for data visualisation practice. ^
Data World: https://data.world/
Using AI
AI as a search tool: AI tools can search the web and help uncover datasets on Kaggle, government portals and other sources that you may not have found otherwise. Make sure to be specific with your prompts. Using AI can be particularly helpful when looking for specific data to supplement an initial dataset you may have.
Ai for the creation of data: To practise Tableau skills, AI can generate fictional datasets for you to work with. This is a good way to apply your learning to imaginary datasets that you may not otherwise be able to access. However, make sure to reference that your dataset is AI generated!
Some key things to look out for:
Is this data the most up to date dataset?
Where is the dataset from and how was it created?
Always check whether:
- Attribution is required
- General commercial use is allowed