Jim Wahl, Sr. Director, Product Management at Aware and Ryan Sleeper, Manager, Data Visualization & Analysis at Evolytics, discussed Tableau’s impact on data visualization and the upcoming Iron Viz competition of the event with theCUBE host Jeff Kelly, live at the Tableau Customer Conference 2013. To be part of this final competition, a prior champion title in a prior data visualization contest is a requirement.

Wahl explained that the previous competition he attended was about presenting data in an interesting format, for which he had used volunteer data. He said it was very important to “find the right data set and then play with it. The great thing about Tableau is that it helps you find questions. You wouldn’t know to ask those questions unless you got your hands dirty with your data.”

His visualization project involved data on volunteerism in America, following trends in different states, based on age groups, ethnicity, economical factors, or other criteria. The highlighted benefit of using Tableau was that it did not offer static visualization, but something more dynamic instead.

Sleeper also runs a sports blog, which he uses to experiment with Tableau. In the previous Tableau-run contest, he was supposed to take a visualization that he had created with Tableau 7 and then remake it with the capabilities in Tableau 8. The data he used was related to baseball statistics.

The Iron Viz competition gives participants 20 minutes with a data set to create the best visualization. Sleeper said, “I am just excited to be here. There is not too much to prepare or get nervous for.”

“It’s nerve wrecking,” Wahl added. “It’s going to be fun and it’s going to be interesting,” as there are always more ways to look at the same data.

Data visualization roles in the enterprise

Asked which were the roles of data visualization in an organization and which were the benefits of using it, Wahl said that in the past, senior management used to come up with a question and by the time Operations was able to answer it in about two weeks, the question would have shifted. With Tableau and data visualization, “the people asking the question can answer it.” He deemed Tableau as a “night and day change in the way I work. In tableau you don’t need to be a data guy, you need to be someone who’s interested in the problem.”

Commenting on the role of data visualization, Sleeper stated, “I definitely always design with the end user in mind,” so that analysts don’t necessarily need to know all the questions users have in mind. From an agency perspective, “there is a lot of interactivity that you can create,” and quite a lot of automation.

• Causation vs. Correlation in Big Data

Asked to share their take on the causation vs. correlation debate and which is more important to Big Data, Wahl said that “causation is always better than just a correlation. Nine times of the 10, correlation is enough to solve the problem,” and then discover a good theory or hypothesis for the causation.

The most important characteristic in a person if they are going to be successful at visualizing and communicating data in their organization, according to Wahl, was to “ignore the type of reports that your company usually has,” as they usually don’t take advantage of the newer tools. The greatest challenge and the way to break out is to introduce a new way to present data.

Sleeper said that those who want to break away need to realize “there’s an evolution in data visualization.” With Tableau you’re able to take visualization, automation, and interaction one step further. “They did a good job at setting up a community that can help,” he added.