Advanced Analytics and Dashboards for Communication I

We will focus on Dashboards in today's class, using Tableau. This class introduces students to the practical application of Tableau for visualizing financial data sourced from the SEC's EDGAR APIs. Students will transform raw financial filings into dynamic and insightful dashboards, allowing for the identification of trends, outliers, and relationships within publicly reported financial data. The focus will be on creating visualizations that support evidence-based decision-making and enhance the ability to communicate financial insights effectively.

Why is this important?

With the increasing availability of structured financial data, tools like Tableau provide auditors and analysts with a means to extract, analyze, and present key insights rapidly. This class emphasizes the importance of visual analytics in understanding complex datasets and conveying findings to stakeholders. By leveraging Tableau's interactive capabilities, students will gain a deeper understanding of financial reporting dynamics and develop essential skills for modern audit and financial analysis practices.

Materials:

Case: N/A.
No slides are available for this class.
Data: A data update may be required for this class. To ensure your files are the most up-to-date, navigate to ACCTG522_Labs folder and run the command git pull.
Analytics Tools: Tableau.

Review and Extension:

The skills developed in this class are directly applicable to the final project, where students will investigate anomalies in financial data using advanced visualization techniques. Specifically, the ability to create compelling and interactive dashboards will enable students to articulate findings effectively, bridging the technical analysis performed earlier in the course with a persuasive narrative for stakeholders. This serves as a capstone demonstration of their analytical and communication expertise.

Preparation:

1. No required preparation. Note that this class will make use of Tableau on the remote labs, so there is no need to be concerned about an expired trial license used earlier in ACCTG521.

Class Plan:

Teams: during this class, please sit in your assessment teams.

1. Due to the disruptive nature of the bomb cyclone hitting Seattle and surrounding areas, this class will be more like an informal workshop with and overview of examples of how prior years' have presented their final project material.
2. Additional time will be given to work in teams on your Alteryx project or Tableau design, as well as to ask questions before next Tuesday's check in meetings.