Addressing and partitioning are very similar to scope and direction but are most often used to describe how table calculations are computed with absolute reference to certain fields in the view. With addressing and partitioning, you define which dimensions in the view define the partition (scope) and which dimensions define the addressing (direction). Using addressing and partitioning gives you much finer control because your table calculations are no longer relative to the table layout and you have many more options for fine-tuning the scope, direction, and order of the calculations.

To begin to understand how this works, let's consider a simple example. Using the view from the preceding example, set the Compute using value of the Index field to the Department dimension.

What this does is tell Tableau to compute Index along (in the direction of) the selected dimension. In other words, you have used Department for addressing. All other dimensions in the view are...