Book Image

Learning Tableau 2019 - Third Edition

By : Joshua N. Milligan
Book Image

Learning Tableau 2019 - Third Edition

By: Joshua N. Milligan

Overview of this book

Tableau is the gold standard of business intelligence and visual analytics tools in every industry. It enables rapid data visualization and interpretation with charts, graphs, dashboards, and much more. Updated with the latest features of Tableau, this book takes you from the foundations of the Tableau 2019 paradigm through to advanced topics. This third edition of the bestselling guide by Tableau Zen Master, Joshua Milligan, will help you come to grips with updated features, such as set actions and transparent views. Beginning with installation, you'll create your first visualizations with Tableau and then explore practical examples and advanced techniques. You'll create bar charts, tree maps, scatterplots, time series, and a variety of other visualizations. Next, you'll discover techniques to overcome challenges presented by data structure and quality and engage in effective data storytelling and decision making with business critical information. Finally, you'll be introduced to Tableau Prep, and learn how to use it to integrate and shape data for analysis. By the end of this book, you will be equipped to leverage the powerful features of Tableau 2019 for decision making.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: Tableau Foundations
5
Section 2: Leveraging the Full Power of Tableau
10
Digging Deeper - Trends, Clustering, Distributions, and Forecasting
11
Section 3: Data Prep and Structuring
14
Section 4: Advanced Techniques and Sharing with Others

Ad hoc calculations

Ad hoc calculations allow you to add calculated fields to shelves in a single view without adding fields to the data pane.

Let's say you have a simple view that shows the Rent per Guest, like this:

What if you wanted to quickly highlight any renters who had paid less than $1,450? One option would be to create an ad hoc calculation. To do so, simply double-click on an empty area of the Columns, Rows, or Measure Values cards, or on the empty space of the Marks shelf, and then start typing the code for a calculation. In this example, we've double-clicked the empty space on the Marks shelf:

Here, we've entered code that will return True if the sum of Rent is less than $1,450 and False otherwise. Pressing Enter or clicking outside the text box will reveal a new ad hoc field that can be dragged and dropped anywhere within the view. Here, we&apos...