Word Cloud in Tableau
Word Cloud:
A word cloud is visual representation of text which shows the frequency of words in the data. Word clouds are the info-graphic visualization that can be depicted by the size and color of the chosen fields in the data where the most frequently used words appear larger and bolder. These are used to identify the main themes in the text. Word Cloud is also known as Tag Cloud.
In the above image of word cloud, it is easy to find the most frequent words (commonly known as tags), for example, California, New York, Washington, Texas etc. It would be very difficult to observe these words manually going though each text in the data. Word Cloud makes it easy for the users to quickly identify recurring words and themes in a text.
Word Cloud is an attractive visualization and easy to understand representation. These are used in many different aspects. In marketing, it is used to analyze customer reviews to find the most discussed concern. It helps students visualize key terms in a subject. Presentations can be made attractive with the inclusion of Word Clouds to capture audience attention.
How to create Word Cloud in Tableau:
The data source referred here is ‘Sample – Superstore’ from Kaggle. Here we will create a word cloud showing the city names with respect to the profit i.e. the city name with the highest profit will appear larger and bolder in the word cloud.
1. After connecting to the data source ‘Sample - Superstore’, drag and drop the [city] in the Text under Marks pane.
2. Drag and drop the [city] in the Color under Marks pane.
3. Drag and drop Profit in the Size under Marks pane. It will form a tree map with New York city having the highest profit as shown below.
4. In Marks pane, change ‘Automatic’ to ‘Text’ in the drop down as shown below. It will form the Word Cloud showing all the city names, with the highest profit showing the largest in size.
5. Taking it to further level, we can filter the city names having the profit greater than $1000. Drag and drop the [city] into the Filters and click on Condition tab. Select ‘By Field’ and make Sum of [profit] greater than 1000, as shown in the image below.
6. Click ‘OK’. It will show only the city names having profit greater than $1000 in the Word Cloud. As clear by the image shown below, New York City has the highest Profit.
Drawbacks of Word Cloud:
1. It, sometimes, will not reflect the accurate content of the text, if different words are used for the same idea, for example, synonyms.
2. It also does not provide context or the importance of words, so, may lose the meaning of the individual word or tags.
3. It can create a false impression of the body of the words, in the word cloud visual, which can lead to interpretation errors.
4. It does not give in-depth analysis or comparisons.
5. It is sometimes noisy and do not reveal much for complex datasets or datasets that have high vocabulary.
Conclusion:
Data Clouds is visual display of text data where the most important words stand out the biggest and boldest. It is a versatile tool for analyzing and visualizing textual data offering a simple yet impactful summary of large datasets. However it is important to remember, it gives a high-level overview but may not represent the complex relationship between the words or detailed context, which may lead to interpretation errors.
Thank you for reading. Happy Analyzing!!
