Documenting my Tableau learning journey.

Population Pyramid

How Singapore’s population changes across the years.
Full visualisation available on Tableau Public.

Good for

Analysing population by age and gender.

How to create - step by step

The data
I have used the Singapore Residents By Age Group, Ethnic Group and Gender from data.gov.sg.

Before loading into Tableau, I have extracted only the female and males data from 1981 to 2019 using Excel as the remaining data is irrelevant for this exercise.

Step 1 - Data in correct data type and rename headers
I have made the necessary changes to the data types and renamed headers to the following:

Step 2 - Create calculated field for female and male population
In order to create a population pyramid, the female and male population needs to be two separate fields.
To separate them, I created two calculated fields:

  1. Male Population

  2. Female Population

Step 3 - Filter Year
Drag “Year” to the Filters Panel and select the year you want.

Step 4 - Populate columns and rows
Populate rows according to the figure below.

Step 5 - Reverse the male pop axis
Right click the x-axis of male population > Edit Axis > Tick “Reversed” under Scale.

Step 6 - Format colour Under the Marks panel > Female population > colour > select pink.

Step 7 - Name title

You now have a static population pyramid chart!

Now let’s add some animation.

Step 7 - animation Remove the “Year” from the Filters panel and drag “Year” to the Pages panel.
This slider should show up to the right of your chart:

Click play to view animation.

And… there have you it! An animated population pyramid is ready for analysis!

I would like to thank Prof Kam of Singapore Management University for the inspiration.