This is the first installment of my newly launched Tableau Public Resources Series
The Data
This data is from the Global Stats Stas Counter website. They are “a web analytics service who’s code is written on more than 2.5 million sites globally.” They an “independent company that provide unbiased stats on Internet activity.”
Basically, every time you visit a site with this code installed, this site is able to fetch data on the device you are using. They then aggregate the data up to the level you desire.
Tableau grabbed worldwide mobile operating system usage by month from 2009 through 2014. Being that this is worldwide data, there are a lot of operating systems that we don’t use here in the states (I would be interested in seeing this data broken down by country. But alas, I’ll save that for a different time). Keep in mind that this is “mobile” data, so only smartphones are included in this dataset.
The first thing that pops out at you is how Android is dominating the market. But keep in mind that on top of making their own phones, they also allow several other manufacturers to run Android operating systems. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that they leading the way in this arena. Again, seeing a breakdown by country would be interesting.
So what can we see with this data? The first thing that I see is that in five years, Android has been able to increase their market share so much that now nearly 2 out of every 3 mobile devices, worldwide, run Android software. That’s impressive.
Another thing I noticed was that throughout Android’s rise, while they’ve been always increasing, they seem to take a dip each time iOS has a peak and vice versa.
Under the Hood
So the whole point of this series (and ultimately, the reason Tableau Public supplies these datasets) is to grow my Tableau data visualization skills. So what did I learn with this viz?
I learned how to make a slope graph. Seen them done one several vizzes but I’ve never really made them before. I chose it on this one because I wanted to highlight the overall five-year change.
Then I remembered seeing Andy Kriebel focusing on this chart type for a recent Tableau Tip Tuesday.
I also learned how to play with the different settings on the Text mark card. Because of the overlapping values, I first thought about simply annotating each mark but I pushed myself to see if there was another way. Sure enough, you can set the text labels to Min/Max and select a setting to not have values overlap. I also learned that you can set the color of the font to mark color. This was good because now I could get rid of the color legend all together.
#LearningTableau
Who should play with this dataset? Why?
If you are looking to grow your skills in Tableau using and manipulating dates, I would recommend this dataset.
Thanks for reading! Until next time…