I’ve heard about Tableau for a while and finally spent some time this afternoon downloading and using the free public version. It’s a very capable, sophisticated program with a relatively friendly user interface given the numerous ways to visualize and analyze data.
After I went through a brief tutorial it took me just a few minutes to produce this graphic depicting Gini coefficients in each county in the contiguous United States. (The data was in hand prior to launching the program.)
Recall Gini coefficients measure income inequality. The coefficient varies between 0 and 1. A coefficient of 0 indicates complete income equality, everyone has the same income. A coefficient of 1 indicates complete inequality, one person (or household if that’s the unit of measurement) has all the income. In the graph the darker the red the greater the inequality.
The free public version is available here. Comparison of the features of the free Public Edition with the Personal ($999) and Professional Editions ($1,999) is found here.