TABLEAU EXERCISE

Before interview
GETTING MORE HANDS ON WITH TABLEAU
• USING THE BOSTON CRIME DATA TO SHARPEN OUR SKILLS

Situation:
With the goal of identifying how crimes are trending in Boston, the Chief of Police wants
to have a full 360-degree view of the crimes that have taken place over the past 3 years so
they can draft a response strategies to bring down the rate of criminal activity.

They’re interested in understanding the number and types of incidents occurring? When
are they most likely to occur?

You’ve been able to find a Boston Crime dataset from the Boston Police Department and
decide to use Tableau to see what you can find.

Material
Use Boston_Crime_Data_2019_2021.xlsx file 2
 EXAMPLE
• Example 1 – The Mayor of Boston wants to know more information
about the timing of crimes for 2020, how can you help them out?

INSTRUCTIONS
Dimensions to use:
• Day of the week
• Occurred Date/Time
• Crimes Reported

Topics Covered in this Example

• Axis labeling & formatting
• Aggregate measures
• Heat Maps
Visualization Final Product

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 HANDS-ON ACTIVITIES

• Activity 1 – Can you help the Boston Chief of

Police identify the top 5 most reported
offenses? How about the top 5 districts with the
most offenses?

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 HANDS-ON ACTIVITIES

• Activity 2 – Can you help the Boston Chief of

Police identify what percentage of crimes
are related to theft in 2020?

• Hint: Use field Offense Descriptions

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 HANDS-ON ACTIVITY
• Activity 3 – The Mayor of Boston wants to know how many shootings have happened
in 2020 and 2021 based on the crimes reported?
• Are there any trends? Bars = # of shootings
Line = # of crimes reported
Hint:
Dimensions to use:
• Years
• Occurred On Date
• Number of Records
• Shooting

Topics Covered in Example

• Aggregate measures (sum &
count)
• Dual Axis Charts
• Types of charts
Visualization Final Product
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 HANDS-ON ACTIVITIES
• Activity 4 – The dataset has latitude and longitude data. We are asked
to use these values to identify intensity of crimes in particular areas.
• Can you use maps to have visibility of the incidents?

Visualization Suggested Final Product

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 HANDS-ON ACTIVITIES

• Activity 5 – The Police chief has additional

resources to help decrease crime (budget,
police officers, car patrols). How would you
use this data to help him decide how to use
them?

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 PUBLISH TO TABLEAU PUBLIC
• Activity 6 – Please create a Tableau Story with the views created before
and publish them to tableau public.

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