I just got pointed to this great post on the Tableau forums. Jonathan Drummey has compiled a great technical resource on how Tableau integrates with R via the SCRIPT_*() functions. A recommended read!
Great community post on Tableau and R integration
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The Last Data Bender 
Hi Alan. I have been viewing some of the excellent presentations from last years Tableau Conference, especially those on advanced mapping by Steve Burger. Have perused the forums and not sure they answer my problem. I have a file with student enrolments by (Australian) postcodes. I also have university campus names by latitude and longitude which im trying to incorporate into my viz. I’ve tried basic data blending with dual axis maps and custom geocoding but cant get it to play ball. Ideally im trying to develop a Radius map to look at the number of students who live within x kms of a particular campus. But first things first – how can i get the enrolments by postcode on the same map as the campuses by lats and longs. Any ideas most appreciated. Thanks
To mix your campus locations with the locations for students by postcode, you’re going to need to do some data prep to get both sets of data into a single data source. This post gives you the initial approach but depending on your requirements you might not need the polygon vertex points – just the centroids:
https://blog.databender.net/2014/06/23/points-and-polygons/
You can get the postcode centroid data from the POA file in the ASGS Dropbox folder referenced in this blog post:
https://blog.databender.net/2014/08/03/australian-region-boundaries-in-tableau/
Get these two combined into a single data source with a field helping you differentiate them and then you would be able to plot the data.
To do the range selection you can use either Haversine or Pythagorean logic to calculate the distance. Or, in Tableau 9.1 we are introducing a distance measure on the radial selector – this might be suitable enough to give you what you need.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Alan
Thanks very much Alan. I will give that a go. The distance measure on the radial selector in Tableau 9.1 sounds exactly what im after. I look forward to seeing it. In relation to Steve Burgers presentation at TC2014 “Advanced mapping: Points, Paths and Polygons” would you happen to know if his workbook is available? Thank you. Paul
Hi Paul – it looks like this session did not have a published workbook or presentation:
https://tc14.tableau.com/schedule/thursday#session-903
Sorry,
Alan
Alan ,
Any ideas if such quality documentation by end user community can also be incorporated into official Tableau documentation ? I have seen another official paper written by Elaine Chen (product management team) but that was less detailed as compared to this community document. I may be wrong as I don’t have any official support documents but your 2 cents will be helpful.
Thanks
Aashish
Hi Aashish,
Thanks for the positive feedback on the document. This whitepaper was designed to augment the existing documentation for Tableau. It incorporates a lot of material that is sourced from the docs as well as other sources but I don’t see it ever becoming part of the core documentation set.
One of the fantastic things about Tableau is the community and that other authors (e.g. Elaine and others) produce lots of additional material such as these papers, blog posts, etc. A good dose of Google-fu is generally the best way to find it.
Cheers,
Alan