The Tenzer Visualization Contest for summer 2021 was created for incoming DePauw first-year students from the class of 2025. It involves participants using the Tableau Public visualization platform to create an interactive dashboard for a provided data set. For this summer, we're providing two datasets - one about Olympic athletes and the other related to funding for start-ups across the world. The data visualization skills that you'll learn, practice, and improve are practical and can be applied throughout your tenure at DePauw and/or post-DePauw as a professional. This contest is suitable for students who have never created any type of visualization and/or have never used the Tableau platform. Your results will be kept confidential (being shared only with Tenzer personnel and the judges) so please don't be shy to try. Current DePauw students have worked with these data sets, helped to create this contest, and will serve as judges.
For this contest, you are required to use the Tableau Public software and online sharing platform. Tableau Public is free to everyone and available for PC and Mac. Click the icon to the left to sign up for a free account and then download the software and post your visualization to your portfolio.
You'll be able to use one of two simple, but rich, datasets obtained from Wisdom Axis (related to olympic athletes) and data.world (related to funding for start-ups). Both were downloaded on 6/7/2021, and we further cleaned it in preparation for this contest.
Olympic Athletes: Each row represents an Olympic athlete and includes their age, country, year of the Olympics, season, sports category as well as a breakdown of the medals won.
Funding for Start-ups: This data represents the amount of money provided for various start-up companies through each funding round, along with the funded year and information about the companies such as their names, markets, the country, the city, or the region they locate and the funding round types they raised.
Click the icon on the left to find the datasets stored in an accessible folder on a Google Shared Drive.
The following examples were built by Anna Baig, a rising junior, and Josh Huynh, a rising sophomore at DePauw. Anna and Josh have experience with Tableau, and are interning with the Tenzer Technology Center this summer. They will also help judge for this contest!
The goal of this exercise is to use one of the provided datasets to create and post an interactive dashboard to Tableau Public. In order to be considered for prizes, your visualization (an interactive dashboard) must meet the following minimum criteria:
Use one of the provided datasets
Contain at least two separate but related charts
Choose a suitable size for your dashboard and ensure it is visible to anyone using the link that you submit
Give your data visualization a single main title (which captures the essence of the dashboard as a whole)
Include a text box (small font is fine) on your dashboard, or add the following note to your metadata description box:
For Olympics Dataset: "Data was downloaded from the Wisdom Axis portfolio on 6/7/2021 and then cleaned by personnel from the Tenzer Technology Center at DePauw University."
For Funding Dataset: “Data was downloaded from Andrew Duff's data.world portfolio on 6/7/2021 and then cleaned by personnel from the Tenzer Technology Center at DePauw University."
Include your name and expected DPU class year (in this case, all of you should be "2025") in the dashboard itself or in the metadata description box
Your dashboard can focus on one region, one country, or selected countries at any specific time, or perhaps you aren't going to show geography at all, and instead, you may choose to look at other features of the datasets. Just consider what story you want to tell about whichever dataset that you chose. Narrow your focus; do not try to include or utilize all aspects of either dataset. Be creative; there are dozens of possibilities. Just be sure to use the provided data and meet the above minimum criteria.
Lastly, you may take inspiration from any number of sources, but plagiarism under any form will disqualify participants from this contest. We want to see your ideas and skills, not someone else's work!
The submission form will close at 5:00 pm EDT on July 14. We will not be accepting late entries.
This contest is open to all incoming DePauw students of the class of 2025.
Judging will focus on clarity, accuracy, creativity, and aesthetics, but it will be very friendly and forgiving. You are not expected to be visualization experts. Just do the best you can with whatever you know about visualization best practices. Here are some recommendations:
Prepare and present a concise and accurate story; focus.
Ensure you have an accurate title and perhaps a short description.
Think creatively and bring your own style; even seemingly small things like color choices and layout can have a big impact and will help separate your visualization.
Less material that is clearly presented with clean aesthetics is usually better than multiple clumsy charts that don’t coalesce.
We intend to have at least one grand prize, other top finishers, and several honorable mentions. Prize packs may feature technology equipment and/or DePauw swag, gear or clothing. Prizes may not be distributed until we’re back on campus in August.
Winners will be announced via email and on this page as soon as possible after the deadline and no later than the end of July.
We will only judge one submission from each student. If you make 2 or more submissions, we'll simply use the most recent while ignoring the others.
Your visualization only needs to be visible to anyone with the direct URL (so that we can view and judge it). We won't share or post your visualization without your explicit consent. If you have any doubts or concerns about it being viewed more broadly or with random people finding it (i.e. what we typically refer to as public), just list it as “not visible" on your Tableau Public portfolio. This will ensure that only people with the direct URL can view it and essentially eliminate the possibility that is "found" by random people.
Definitely not! Our goal is to encourage and promote your learning of a new technology and data visualization skills. This contest is designed to get you started with Tableau while also providing a fun summer engagement opportunity before the fall semester.
Michael Boyles, director of Tenzer Technology Center at DePauw University, will host a contest kickoff workshop on June 30. This workshop will be hosted using Zoom. Here are the Zoom coordinates:
Topic: Tenzer Visualization Contest Summer 2021
Time: Jun 30, 2021 11:15 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
https://depauw-edu.zoom.us/j/92738013418?pwd=K21yblIwTUFTN3p5UHNXNW1Cdy9tdz09
Meeting ID: 927 3801 3418
Passcode: 664989
Our director will walk through the most basic features and functions of the Tableau Public software while creating a working example and then take questions. The workshop will be recorded and posted here.
Here is the recorded session video.
Here is the final dashboard that was created during the workshop.
Additionally, please see the subsequent "more learning resources" question for additional tutorials and videos from Tableau.
Here is the online How-to Videos page for Tableau Public. We recommend concentrating on the following videos first as these may best relate to this contest:
1. Tableau Public Overview
2. Connecting to Excel and Text Files
11. Creating Your First Chart
12. Using the Show Me Tool Bar
13. Understanding the Logic of Charts
14. Combining Sheets on a Dashboard
15. Adding Interactivity to Dashboards
16. Dashboard Formatting
21. Adding a custom Viz in Tooltip
And here is the online Free Training Videos page from Tableau Desktop. Tableau Desktop is technically a separate software, but most of its features that you may leverage for this contest work similarly in Tableau Public. These are the Tableau Desktop video sections that we recommend:
Getting Started
Visual Analytics
Dashboards and Stories (but ignore the Stories videos)
Mapping
Accuracy and clarity are critical, but artistic expression and aesthetics are also important
Less material that is clearly presented is often better than a bunch of seemingly random charts that don’t coalesce
Focus on telling a story; do not try to impress us by demonstrating a bunch of Tableau Public features and functions
Even seemingly small things like color choices and layout can have a big impact and will help separate your visualization
Check your work carefully; ask yourself how each chart, title, color, font, data point, etc. is contributing to your visualization
Do not hesitate to ask questions!
If you have any concerns related to the contest, the data, or the Tableau software itself, please direct them to the Tenzer Technology Center director, Michael Boyles, at michaelboyles@depauw.edu. You can also contact the current Tenzer Technology Center's interns, Anna Baig '2023 at annabaig_2023@depauw.edu or Josh Huynh '2024 at duyhuynh_2024@depauw.edu.
Grand Prize - Huyen Anh Nguyen ‘25
Top Finishers - Tingwei Yang ‘25, JiYoon Kang ‘25, Nguyen Truc ‘25
Honorable Mention - Yena Choi ‘25