Tableau 2019.x Cookbook: Over 115 recipes to build end-to-end analytical solutions using Tableau

Tableau is complex. Basics are pretty easy, but when you want to do something really interesting, like regression analysis, it's hard. The examples in the book are accessible, clear, and short. You won't find a deep interpretation of the recipes here, but for most of them, you don't need that. Particularly helpful were the examples integrating R and showing advanced visualizations. Overall, a solid and worthwhile book. Nice job!

Good book with enough examples and explanations.

Wonderful and handy to have

This book, from PACKT, appears to be a professional handbook on the advanced application of Tableau. At 670 pages, and over £28.00 for the Kindle edition, one might expect an authoritative publication on Tableau. There are downloadable files to create all the examples and everything is presented in a logical manner.I have returned this book and gained a full refund as it was liberally padded with blank pages, provided only rudimentary examples on barely filled pages and was vastly inferior to the free and fully transcribed official tableau website video training.As a result of this purchase experience, and that of searching for authoritative, up to date, books about Tableau on Amazon, I have put in place several rules before considering to buy.1. Does the book allow 'Look inside'? If not, I'm not going to look into the book any further. To date, I have returned all technical references that I have bought that did not support 'Look Inside' as they have proved to be nothing more than cynical or basic guides for beginners.2. Was the book published or revised within the last year? Tableau release about 3 to 4 times a year. What is a credible solution a year ago, may well be a workaround for a new feature today; Dynamic parameters and buffering calculations for creating proximity analysis are cases in point for release 2020.1.With the price of kindle offering almost that of print, I'm not prepared to pay £20-30 a time on books that have no more than 2 years of usable life.3. Is the author known for their success at Tableau application. Whilst not an indication of quality contents in itself, when considered with the first two points, I find that this will help determine if buy the book or not.I have found that established industry specialists with a genuinely high reputation and high profile lecture acumen do write books that deliver on their promise; the O'Reilly range with Ray Sleeper (Practical Tableau 2018) is a good example.BOOK CONTENT AND USEFULNESS-----------------------------------------In practice, this book is very sparsely written and contains so many blank pages that I felt it had been deliberately ‘padded’ to appear more than it was. Due to the similarity in content, I felt that the book was, at best, a version of notes for the freely available official Tableau online training which I completed before looking for books on the advanced application of Tableau.Unlike the website, this book will not train the novice user in BI or Tableau best practice as the user merely repeats the steps presented. Also, this book is already dated where the website is constantly updated with the latest techniques for the latest release.As a BI consultant & developer, I am expected to deliver highly specialised analytical models and dashboards using the client preferred software solution. In preparation for my new project, I first reviewed the entire FREE training offered by the tableau website.QUALIFICATIONS--------------------If formal tableau qualification were required, and as a demonstration of the high level of quality available for free, it is my opinion that the website provides everything a user could need to prepare and qualify in two of the three recognised Tableau standards: Specialist ($100.00 exam) and Associate ($250.00 exam). The third standard is that of professional ($600.00 exam for 3-year certificate) which would require experience and time to achieve where the first two standards could be achieved in a week of dedicated study.TOPICS---------The book and website cover almost similar topics. However, the website is far more complete and fully covers the following:1. Tableau Prep builder2. Tableau Conductor3. Tableau Desktop (Calculations, maps, groups, sets, formatting, dashboard design, etc).4. Tableau Online5. Tableau Server & Online Deployment6. Tableau AdministrationUnlike the book, the website achieves its aim with over 11 hours of ‘how-to’ video, all fully transcribed and supported with a complete suite of the required example datasets and over 90 BI models for working along with plus over 70 finished working examples to verify your solutions against.REFUND REQUEST-----------------------After only 20 mins of reading, I requested a refund for my kindle purchase which Amazon carried out immediately. on the basis of this book, I will be cautious about purchasing any future PACKT offerings.Tableau is a great package with a rich and diverse community. I have since discovered all that I was looking for in youtube videos and forums, such as:1. Map analysis using distance.2. Creation of a product catalog with product to page and including associated images.3. TabPy - application of Python with Tableau4. Complex calculations for driving dynamic user interactive selections for comparison analysis.

The content is good but the quality of paper and print is not. I have ebook and wanted hard copy so I didn’t have to go back and forth to practice exercises. Ebook is color and although hard copy is $50 it is black and white. I do not think it is worth the price