Are you a fan of The Office, and do you also love the field of data visualization? If so, let’s have some fun: Which character from The Office best matches your personality type?

You may be able to relate to my personal routine: Every day I check my Twitter feed and am blown away by the Tableau community’s ability to visualize data in the most unique and powerful ways. Many of the vizzes that go viral incorporate the latest in new features—from transparent worksheet backgrounds to the incredible power of dashboard set actions. These new features are not only exciting, but serve as a motivator for me to embrace those Tableau basics such Level of Detail Expressions and calculated fields. Mastering Tableau basics will hopefully help me build a solid foundation so that I can fully understand how to correctly use these new features. For instance, it is a little hard to understand set actions if you have never created a set.

The theme for this month’s Storytelling with Data Challenge is holiday data. While I originally planned to choose a data set with a more festive theme, I happen to read an article about the original meaning of the classic song, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”. The song is sung by a soldier during World War II who dreams of coming home for Christmas.