Data BricolageHow Tableau Facilitates the Adjacent Possible

Dan Murray, InterWorksTableau Fringe Festival

October 5, 2015

BricolageAbstractions

Adjacent PossibilitiesVisual Memory

Bricolage \brē-kō-ˈläzh\

Bricolage is a French loanword that means the process of improvisation in a human endeavor.

Works or products of DIY endeavors.

Writing & Bricolage

Pablo PicassoVisual bricolage

Picasso’s abstract reductionism

Stuart Kauffman

Adjacent Possible

1st order combinations

Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From

Stephane TarnierChicken incubator

to

Childincubator

Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From

Adjacent Possible“We have a natural tendency to romanticize breakthrough innovations...

But ideas are works of bricolage

Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From

Tableau = Data Bricolage

Mechanisms for facilitating combinations of ideas, data and images.

Tableau Public

Creates adjacent possibilities

Tableau Public

Data Bricolage

Adjacent Possibilities = Data Bricolage

What else?

Method of Loci

The oldest known mnemonic strategy.

Grandmaster of MemoryMemorize 1,000 random digits in an hour

Memorize the order of 10 decks of cards in an hour

Memorize the order of one deck of cards < 2 minutes

Grandmasters by Country

Why Tableau?

Enables data bricolage

Facilitate the adjacent possible

Provides spatial memory triggers

Reports

The data you know

Analysis

The data you know you need to know more about.

Discovery

The data you don’t know you need to know more about.

Three Kinds of Data

The data you know (reports)

The data you know you need to know more about (analysis)

The data you don’t know you need to know (discovery)

Recap• Data Bricolage• Remove the non-essential• Memory is visual• Three kinds of data

Tableau = Data Bricolage

Tableau Public = Adjacent Possibilities

Data Visualization = Simplified abstraction

Thank you!Thank you!

Dan Murray, InterWorks2nd Edition