Best Tableau Books – Choose the one that suits you the best!

We know how important books have been all our life in helping us learn and gain valuable knowledge. No matter how many technologically advanced alternatives we may find for books in today’s time, they still remain of utmost value. Here in this tutorial, we are going to learn about seven important books on Tableau which are going to help you in your Tableau learning.

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”

– Ernest Hemingway

Best Tableau Books

Here is the list of books on Tableau that will help you gain expertise in the tool:

1. Getting Started with Tableau 2019.2 (Second Edition)

– by Tristan Guillevin

This book covers a relatively new version of Tableau that is Tableau 2019.2. We know that Tableau is always releasing newer functionalities with every version. Tableau 2019.2 comes with advanced features related to dashboarding, data visualization, reporting, visual analytics and much more. In this Tableau book, you can even brush up the basic concepts of Tableau along with leveling up your knowledge in Tableau. With the help of this book, you can learn things like how to connect to data, create a data source, create visualizations, build a dashboard, share data online. It also includes some advanced functionalities such as data blending, creating cross-database joins, etc.

Key points:

• Discover and learn about ‘Ask Data’, helps in interacting with data using natural language.
• Connecting tables and making transformations like field pivoting, column splitting, etc.
• Building an efficient data source for analysis.
• Designing data visualization using mark types and other properties.
• Developing powerful dashboards and stories.
• Sharing our work and interacting with Tableau Server.
• Learning data exploration through Tableau.
• Learning Tableau’s advanced features.

2. Mastering Tableau 2019.1 (Second edition)

– by Marleen Meier, David Baldwin

This book provides a range of updated codes, Tableau features, and examples that helps you cover basic and advanced Tableau functionalities. You can learn in-depth with things like data blending, data densification, create joins, spatial joins, advanced level calculations, mapping, visual design, using Tableau extensions. Along with this, you get to level up in Tableau by getting to learn advanced topics like Self-service analytics, Geo-spatial analytics, Time series analytics, connecting to Tableau using R, Python, MATLAB, etc.

Table of contents:

• Getting Up to Speed – A Review of the Basics
• All About Data – Getting Your Data Ready
• Tableau Prep
• All About Data – Joins, Blends, and Data Structures
• All About Data – Data Densification, Cubes, and Big Data
• Table Calculations
• Level of Detail Calculations
• Beyond the Basic Chart Types
• Mapping
• Tableau for Presentations
• Visualization Best Practices and Dashboard Design
• Advanced Analytics
• Improving Performance
• Interacting with Tableau Server
• Programming Tool Integration

3. Learning Tableau 2019 (Third edition)

– by Joshua N. Milligan

This book is said to be the gold standard Tableau guide as it is written by a renowned Tableau expert, Joshua N.Milligan. It begins with teaching you the very basic operations in Tableau that is, from installing Tableau, creating your first visualization if you are new to Tableau and then gradually moving to learn advanced functionalities. This book focuses on different kinds of visualizations such as histograms, treemap charts, bar charts, scatter plots, time series, etc. Another feature of this Tableau book is that it offers solutions for data structure problems, data quality issues, decision making, etc. Also, it covers lessons on Tableau Prep.

Table of contents

• Taking Off with Tableau
• Working with Data in Tableau
• Venturing on to Advanced Visualizations
• Starting an Adventure with Calculations
• Diving Deep with Table Calculations
• Making Visualizations That Look Great and Work Well
• Telling a Data Story with Dashboards
• Digging Deeper – Trends, Clustering, Distributions, and Forecasting
• Cleaning and Structuring Messy Data
• Introducing Tableau Prep
• Advanced Visualizations, Techniques, Tips, and Tricks
• Sharing Your Data Story

Explore the Easy Steps to Create Scatter Plot in Tableau

4. Tableau: Creating Interactive Data Visualizations

– by Jen Stirrup

This Tableau book focuses on Tableau data visualizations and dashboarding in particular. It gives us an overall view on how data visualization and dashboarding is done in Tableau. You start by learning some basics about dashboards and visualizations in Tableau. Followed by learning how to collect and gather data from different data sources using mathematical formula along with filtering and grouping data. In addition to this, you will get to learn about dual axes, sizing, heat maps, scatterplots, etc. This book is divided into three modules by the end of which you can learn Tableau Public that offers a variety of functionalities and features helpful in creating interactive and attractive dashboards and Tableau reports.

Key points:

• Learning how to use string functions in order to work with data and images.
• Learning to upload data into Tableau, create data visualizations and then packaging them for sharing and distribution with others.
• Learn to create filled maps, use custom markers, add slider selectors.
• Learn to apply various filters, logic, and calculating various aggregate measures.
• Exploring data associations or connections in multiple-sourced public data.

5. Advanced Analytics with R and Tableau

– by Jen Stirrup, Ruben Oliva Ramos

This book is an amalgamation of Tableau’s extraordinary visualization capabilities and the analytical power of R. It is especially for visualization-savvy users who wish to dive deep into the vast ocean of data analytics and possibilities to create insightful visualizations from it. We can learn to harness the analytical and predictive capabilities of R by implementing them in Tableau from this book. It is a perfect book for those who want to learn some advanced level Tableau skills.

Table of contents:

• Advanced Analytics with R and Tableau
• The Power of R
• A Methodology for Advanced Analytics Using Tableau and R
• Prediction with R and Tableau Using Regression
• Classifying Data with Tableau
• Advanced Analytics Using Clustering
• Advanced Analytics with Unsupervised Learning
• Interpreting Your Results for Your Audience

6. Tableau 10 Complete Reference

– by Joshua N. Milligan, Tristan Guillevin

This Tableau book is a fun and easy guide to Tableau 10. It will start by giving you a little introduction on data visualization and its origin. Further ahead, it explains connecting, cleaning and analyzing data in Tableau, applying calculations, using them in tables, etc. and all this with easy examples. Then it covers some interesting and advanced chart types commonly used in Tableau. Also, you get to learn about dashboards, data preparation, geospatial analysis, storytelling, etc. making it a good Tableau guide that provides overall learning covering all the important topics.

Table of contents:

• Creating Your First Visualizations and Dashboard
• Working with Data in Tableau
• Moving from Foundational to More Advanced Visualizations
• Using Row-Level, Aggregate, and Level of Detail Calculations
• Table Calculations
• Formatting a Visualization to Look Great and Work Well
• Telling a Data Story with Dashboards
• Deeper Analysis – Trends, Clustering, Distributions, and Forecasting
• Making Data Work for You
• Advanced Visualizations, Techniques, Tips, and Tricks
• Sharing Your Data Story
• Catching Up with Tableau 2018
• Deal with Security
• How to Keep Growing Your Skills

7. Tableau 10 Cookbook

– by Donabel Santos

The Tableau 10 cookbook is specially designed for the business, data, analytics professionals who wish to utilize Tableau’s capabilities to support their business and make better decisions using data insights. This cookbook contains recipes or business scenarios in which it teaches you to create charts, dashboards, and other useful visualizations. It begins with explaining simple logic behind visualizations and then going to complex ones. You can learn about Tableau dashboards thoroughly from this book as it has a dedicated section for Tableau Dashboards and techniques for it.

Table of contents:

• Basic Charts
• Advanced Charts
• Interactivity
• Dashboards and Story Points
• Maps and Geospatial Visualization
• Analytics
• Data Preparation

Summary

This brings our article on Tableau books to a conclusion. Here we went through seven essential and official books that are capable of helping you in different ways to learn Tableau.

Now, it’s time to dive into Career Opportunities in Tableau

Want to add more Tableau books? Do mention in the comment section.