During these uncertain times, how can you make sense of the data tsunami being presented on the state of pandemic in US? For the last couple of months, many Americans found themselves checking the spread of COVID-19 cases on a daily basis. As most of US states went into shelter-in-place mode, resources like Johns Hopkins and 91-DIVOC became a daily refuge for those seeking to stay informed. In today’s post, we will work on creating our own version of a web-based, interactive and visually appealing COVID-19 dashboard using Google DataStudio. Doing so we will gain a better understanding of the data used, decide on the type of data we deem most relevant, and maintain control over the best ways to visualize such data to help our audience make most sense of it. In the process of building this data viz, we will utilize various objects and features of the mighty GDS application: Google Sheets connector, Calculated fields, Scorecard, Table, Geo Map, Line and Combo charts, Date range, Filter controls and recently released optional metrics – are some but not all features we will cover.

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