Beyond getting started and want to up your viz game? -

Is this blog for you?

The post here assume you are familiar with writing calculations, creating text tables, and using data in bar and line charts.  You have used Tableau to replicate spreadsheet reports, done some mapping and have created time series dependent line and bar charts.  Most of all you want to take you data visualization game up a notch.

Like many of you I started using Tableau with a background in spreadsheet calculators but really didn’t understand data base driven systems like Tableau.  The transition was anything but smooth. Writing cell-based formulas and copying them down a column came easy, but the concept of dimensions and measures escaped me. Don’t even think abut LOD’s and table calculations.  It took some work, but I became comfortable with the different language and data structure – I call that the “Getting Started” phase.  If you are through Getting Started and ready to use Tableau to tell stories with your viz, use advanced calculations to get deeper into the data or just want to better understand why Tableau does that – then this blog is for you.

No claim is made that the solutions here are the most elegant or unique approach to the problem  – Many would be described as “brute force”, I come from an engineering and marketing background and it is reflected in the approach. 

Finally, I hope to help you get a better understanding of how Tableau works and why the data structure and order of your calculations are so important in getting the results you expect.

I also keep a number of solutions to FAQ’s from the Tableau Community Forum on my Tableau Public site at https://public.tableau.com/profile/jim.dehner#!/  Many include step-by-step how to instructions. I encourage you to check them out and download anything of interest.  That’s why they were created. 

Jim