Understand Data Literacy

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Define data literacy.
Describe how to use each product in the Tableau Platform.

Introduction

The ability to work with data is a sought-after employment skill and an increasingly necessary asset for global citizens. You may be curious about working with data, but unsure how or where to start.

This module is a kick-start to your data journey. Welcome!

If the idea of data literacy makes you nervous, think about times when you have successfully solved problems. Have you ever wanted to:

Re-create a favorite meal without a recipe?
Figure out whether adopting a certain pet would be a good fit for your lifestyle?
Understand how to care for a loved one who was feeling ill?

What did you do? You likely started with a question and then used a variety of methods to collect facts to help you answer that question. You may have noticed that answering one question led to more questions and the need for more facts. After you answered all your questions, you probably found a solution and shared that solution with others.

If any of this sounds familiar, you already have experience with data literacy.

Data Literacy

Simply stated, data literacy is the ability to explore, understand, and communicate with data.

Exploring, understanding, and communicating

Data Literacy Within Tableau

The goal of this badge is to help you to build data literacy. In this module, we use examples from Tableau to build a foundation for working with data.

The Tableau Platform is a suite of software products that help people see and understand data. Our products are transforming the way people use data to solve problems. We make analyzing data fast and easy, beautiful and useful. It's software for anyone and everyone.

The Tableau Platform can help you as you, your team, and your organization develop data literacy skills. For individual Tableau users, Tableau offers products for preparing, analyzing, and sharing data.

Tableau Products

The following table lists the major Tableau products and how they are used.

Product	How to Use the Product
Tableau Prep Builder	Use Tableau Prep Builder on your desktop, or Prep in the browser, to clean, shape, and combine data so that it’s ready for analysis. Validate/preview your data prep in Tableau Desktop. Save cleaned and prepared data extracts to a file, publish to Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud, or write the output from your flows to an external relational database. Save flows or publish to Tableau Server/Cloud to run on a schedule using Tableau Prep Conductor (requires the Data Management Add-on).
Tableau Desktop	Use Tableau Desktop to create and publish data sources and visualizations, to analyze data, and to gain actionable data insights.
Tableau Server Tableau Cloud	Share what you’ve discovered so that others can view and analyze your data on Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud. Tableau Server is a web-based, customer-hosted platform. Tableau Cloud is a Tableau-hosted version of Tableau Server. Author on the web by creating and editing your workbooks on Tableau Cloud or Tableau Server without using Tableau Desktop.
Tableau Public Tableau Desktop Public Edition	Create, save, and share visualizations using Tableau Public, a free, public instance of Tableau Cloud. Use Tableau Desktop Public Edition, a free version of Tableau Desktop, to create and publish visualizations to Tableau Public.
Tableau Mobile	Get access to hosted data on the go with Tableau Mobile, a free app available for iOS and Android.

The Tableau Platform includes some free options for preparing, analyzing, and sharing data.

Product trials: You can download a one-time, limited-time Tableau free trial of Tableau Prep Builder, Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, and Tableau Cloud. If you’re a teacher or student at an accredited educational institution, you can get a free one-year license from Tableau Academic Programs.
Tableau Public: Tableau Public is a free application that allows users to create, save, and share visualizations. The Tableau Public community is a data culture. Community members value, practice, and encourage using data to make decisions because they want to—not because they have to. You can read more and download the application at Tableau Public.