Advanced Analytics and Dashboards for Communication I

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.

What will we do?

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.

How this relates to other classes:

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.