At Tableau, we believe in enabling people of all skill levels to gain insight from their data. Our platform is built on an intuitive interface that empowers anyone to ask and answer questions of their data, regardless of volume or complexity. As advanced and smart analytics are increasingly critical components of business intelligence, business users require tools that simplify their workflows while empowering them to ask deeper questions. When Google Cloud informed us that they were releasing a new way to leverage machine learning technologies, I immediately wanted to know how Tableau could connect.

Machine learning has been a hot topic in analytics for some time. By definition, machine learning is a method of data analysis that uses statistical techniques to give computers the ability to “learn,” without being explicitly programmed. Those who work with machine learning know that it’s a powerful method, but that it can also be shrouded in confusion due to its interpreted complexity. At its core, however, there are many aspects to machine learning that are applicable to anyone that works with data.

Google Cloud just announced a new machine learning feature of BigQuery called BigQuery ML. BigQuery ML allows users to use embedded machine learning technology to train models based on data stored in BigQuery. This essentially means that with a little understanding of SQL and basic machine learning practices you can create and use your own machine learning models. However, just like working with any other data, directly querying a database isn’t always the ideal method to explore the output of your model.

This is where Tableau comes in. With its BigQuery connector, Tableau allows you to easily manipulate the results of your predictive models in a way that facilitates an intuitive understanding of the data. By minimizing the amount of SQL you have to write, and leveraging BigQuery’s astoundingly simple syntax, Tableau is simplifying machine learning for the hundreds of thousands of workers who could benefit from it, but haven’t had the time to learn how. Additionally, Tableau allows users an easy way to share their model and its results with others so that they can benefit from all your work.

Anyone who has built machine learning models knows that whatever you can do to simplify the practice will be a huge step toward bringing machine learning into the masses. This fits naturally with Tableau’s mission to help people see and understand data. Google Cloud and Tableau are working together to enable you to access cutting edge technologies using easy-to-understand techniques.