Last week I have participated at the Tableau Conference for the first time and there I have discovered the importance of polygons in Tableau an how to use them to build a Steam Graph.
So, coming back home I started to look around and find some suitable data for a simple chart. Starting from my passion to travel I discovered the indicator named “number of arrivals” (explained by Index Mundi here).
The data related to the indicator is available on data.worldbank.org and it can be downloaded from here.
How to build a Steam Graph using Tableau
The best answer I found is on Ludovic Tavernier‘s data blog greatified.com and the article has all the details necessary for building a Steam Graph using Tableau Software.
Why a Steam Graph and not a regular Area Chart?
Mainly because I had a curiosity on how to build one and secondly I realized that sometimes the trend is better illustrated with a Steam Graph then using a regular Area Chart.
See the comparison below and pay attention to the period 2018 – 2011:
The same data is in both charts, but as you can see… the second one emphasize better the decrease in the number of visitors after the economic crisis from 2008, while in the Area Chart is not so obvious.
The result:
Image with the dashboard for mobile browsing.
