Book Image

Mastering Tableau

By : David Baldwin
Book Image

Mastering Tableau

By: David Baldwin

Overview of this book

Tableau has emerged as one of the most popular Business Intelligence solutions in recent times, thanks to its powerful and interactive data visualization capabilities. This book will empower you to become a master in Tableau by exploiting the many new features introduced in Tableau 10.0. You will embark on this exciting journey by getting to know the valuable methods of utilizing advanced calculations to solve complex problems. These techniques include creative use of different types of calculations such as row-level, aggregate-level, and more. You will discover how almost any data visualization challenge can be met in Tableau by getting a proper understanding of the tool’s inner workings and creatively exploring possibilities. You’ll be armed with an arsenal of advanced chart types and techniques to enable you to efficiently and engagingly present information to a variety of audiences through the use of clear, efficient, and engaging dashboards. Explanations and examples of efficient and inefficient visualization techniques, well-designed and poorly designed dashboards, and compromise options when Tableau consumers will not embrace data visualization will build on your understanding of Tableau and how to use it efficiently. By the end of the book, you will be equipped with all the information you need to create effective dashboards and data visualization solutions using Tableau.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Mastering Tableau
Credits
About the Author
www.Packtpub.com
Preface

Chapter 6. Level of Detail Calculations

Like most software products, every new version of Tableau heralds new features. In Tableau 9.0, that big new feature was Level of Detail (LOD) calculations. Prominent voices in the Tableau community heralded the new capability as a major breakthrough. The average, everyday Tableau author, however, may have been underwhelmed. In particular, I recall a student in one of my classes communicating, I've learned how to use table calculations to accomplish pretty much what I want. Why do I need LOD calculations?

With the advent of Tableau 10, it may be tempting to some to put LOD calculations on the back burner. After all, they seem unimpressive as they encompass only three expressions: FIXED, INCLUDE, and EXCLUDE. But these three expressions open a world of options by providing the ability to create calculations that target specific levels of granularity. In older versions of Tableau, data granularity for a worksheet was established by the dimensions in...