Tag Archives: table calculations

Top 10 Table Calculations – The Next N, Where N >= 15

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Last year I did the big workbook on conditional formatting to answer some really common questions on the Tableau Community Forums. One of my projects lately has been to do the same for table calculations, which are incredibly powerful, sometimes incredibly complicated, and I believe underutilized. Tableau put together a set of Top 10 Table Calculations, here’s a list I’ve compiled of the next N most-commonly useful table calculations, based on volume of questions on the forums and relative ease of construction (there’s no densification, domain padding, domain completion, or any of that stuff in this batch):

  1. Filter Without Affecting Results
  2. Filter Top N Without Affecting Results
  3. Filter 1st Time Period from Difference from Prior
  4. Sorting by a Table Calc
  5. Comparing Selected to Group
  6. Aggregating at Different Levels…
  7. …And Returning Fewer Results
  8. Filtering Out Extra Marks by Using a Duplicate on the Filters Shelf
  9. Nesting Table Calculations to Aggregate in Different Directions
  10. Performance – One Computation to Return Same Result to All Rows
  11. How Many of X Did How Much of Y
  12. Title Showing Date Range
  13. Jittering a Scatterplot
  14. Extending an Axis with an Invisible Reference Line
  15. Making a String List

And of course, there’s a workbook with instructions! Click to view and download the next N table calculations workbook on Tableau Public or click the image below:

9. Nesting Table Calculations

I can’t claim to have originated any of these calculations, thanks to Ross Bunker, James Baker, Joe Mako, Andy Cotgreave, Richard Leeke, and others I’m sure I’m forgetting for their work!

If you have any other really common uses for table calculations, leave a comment!

Upcoming Presentations

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I’ve been a little quiet the last couple of weeks as I’ve been head-down in a number of projects. A couple of those are webex presentations that are coming up on the next two Thursdays:

  • Grand Totals and Subtotals for Think Data Thursday, May 9, 12pm EDT. This will be a review of the material from my posts on Grand Totals, along with a couple of new ways to visualize and visually think about what Tableau is doing as it computes the Grand Totals. Register here. (free) And here’s the link to get the presentation materials: http://community.tableausoftware.com/thread/125847
  • Treemaps and Table Calculations for the Atlanta Tableau User Group, May 16th, 1pm EDT. This is a walkthrough of how version 8 does sorting, how treemaps are laid out, and making use of At the Level and Restarting Every in table calculations in order to do some useful mark labeling. Here’s the webex info:
Meeting Number: 716 384 179
Meeting Password: ATUG13

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To join this meeting (Now from mobile devices!)
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1. Go to https://nsc.webex.com/nsc/j.php?J=716384179&PW=NYTYyMmI1YTlj
2. If requested, enter your name and email address.
3. If a password is required, enter the meeting password: ATUG13
4. Click "Join".
5. Follow the instructions that appear on your screen.

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Audio conference information
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Conference line:
1-866-672-6771
Participant code: 0256577#

Customizing Grand Totals in Tableau v8 – The Stacking Snag

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Though I got to be one of the beta testers for Tableau version 8, I missed an effect of Tableau’s new rendering engine that affects how we customize Grand Totals.

If you’re in a hurry, here’s the key bit: In version 8, if you are customizing grand totals using the table calculation technique from Customizing Grand Totals – Part 2, set the menu item Analysis->Stack Marks->Off. Alternatively, you can use a table calc on the Pages Shelf, read on for that one.

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Tableau Data Blending, Sparse Data, Multiple Levels of Granularity, and Improvements in Version 8

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Tableau’s data blending feature is great for mashing up data sets from a whole variety of data sources. Want do download local weather data from Weather Underground to see how precipitation affects your coffee sales in Seattle? Sure!

However, blending can be a little tricky to set up to get the appropriate level of detail in the view, especially when you need to blend at one level of granularity and aggregate at another. In this post, I’ll walk you through a technique for doing this in v7, and how version 8 makes this process easier, using an example drawn from my own work that adds a level of complexity because the data is sparse. This makes a great case study for how to integrate different features of Tableau to create the desired view.

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