# Analysing Fuel Economy with Tableau, Workflow & Google sheets

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2016-11-04
- **Format:** Video · 3 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data visualisation, Data prep, Analytics
- **Tools:** Tableau (calculated fields, filters)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/analysing-fuel-economy-with-tableau-workflow-google-sheets
- **Watch:** https://youtu.be/Ta44mMuy8Yk

I connect to a Google Sheets dataset tracking my car's fuel consumption and mileage, do some quick data prep in Tableau, then analyse cost per mile over time. I show how the analysis flagged an oil leak that pushed my fuel cost from an average of 12 pence per mile up to 20 pence.

## Key takeaways

- Connecting Tableau to Google Sheets lets you build a database-style analytics setup for very little cost
- Hide unneeded fields and use the custom split function to break a date out of a single column during quick data prep
- A true/false premium tag should be converted to a dimension before analysis
- Dividing cost by miles driven and adding a formatted currency reference line reveals an average cost per mile (12p) and outliers (20p)
- Cost-per-mile spikes can surface real-world issues, like an oil leak that dropped engine performance, while peaks and troughs otherwise reflect city versus motorway driving

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/analysing-fuel-economy-with-tableau-workflow-google-sheets

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena