Textbook in PDF format

In today's data-driven world, earning the Tableau Certified Data Analyst credential signals your ability to connect, analyze, and communicate insights using one of the industry's leading visualization platforms. This study guide offers practical and comprehensive preparation for the certification exam, with walk-throughs, best practices, vocabulary, and example questions to help you build both confidence and competence in Tableau. Written by Christopher Gardner, business intelligence analyst and lead Tableau developer at the University of Michigan, this guide supports first-time test-takers and seasoned users alike. You'll begin with foundational skills in Tableau Prep Builder and Tableau Desktop—connecting, combining, and preparing data—before progressing to building effective visualizations, performing calculations, and applying advanced tools like level-of-detail expressions, parameters, forecasts, and predictive analytics. Read, manipulate, and prepare data for analysis Navigate Tableau's tools to build impactful visualizations Write calculations and functions to enhance your dashboards Share your work responsibly with secure publishing options Data visualization provides a powerful way to dig into data, and Tableau is one of the leading software titles in the field. Tableau Desktop can measure and segment data in a variety of visual formats, allowing you to see patterns and outliers quickly. It hosts powerful tools that allow you to filter, sort, and organize data easily. It also provides a variety of data source connection types, both stored locally and hosted online. This means that you can combine data between multiple systems that otherwise would not talk to each other, further enhancing your analytic opportunities. In addition, Tableau Prep Builder was developed to supplement the Tableau visualization tool. This data preparation tool further simplifies the data pulling process via an interactive visual interface. It lets you easily clean, aggregate, and combine data sources; preview the data; and identify data mismatches, typos, and other common data errors. Used together, Tableau Prep Builder and Tableau Desktop allow you to investigate and understand complex data sets and relationships