Book Image

Learning Tableau 2020 - Fourth Edition

By : Joshua N. Milligan
Book Image

Learning Tableau 2020 - Fourth Edition

By: Joshua N. Milligan

Overview of this book

Learning Tableau strengthens your command on Tableau fundamentals and builds on advanced topics. The book starts by taking you through foundational principles of Tableau. We then demonstrate various types of connections and how to work with metadata. We teach you to use a wide variety of visualizations to analyze and communicate the data, and introduce you to calculations and parameters. We then take an in-depth look at level of detail (LOD) expressions and use them to solve complex data challenges. Up next, we show table calculations, how to extend and alter default visualizations, build an interactive dashboard, and master the art of telling stories with data. This Tableau book will introduce you to visual statistical analytics capabilities, create different types of visualizations and dynamic dashboards for rich user experiences. We then move on to maps and geospatial visualization, and the new Data Model capabilities introduced in Tableau 2020.2. You will further use Tableau Prep’s ability to clean and structure data and share the stories contained in your data. By the end of this book, you will be proficient in implementing the powerful features of Tableau 2020 for decision-making.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
9
Visual Analytics – Trends, Clustering, Distributions, and Forecasting
17
Other Books You May Enjoy
18
Index

Parameters

Before moving to some additional examples of row-level and aggregate calculations, let's take a little side trip to examine parameters, given that they can be used in incredible ways in calculations.

A parameter in Tableau is a placeholder for a single, global value such as a number, date, or string. Parameters may be shown as controls (such as sliders, drop-down lists, or type-in text boxes) to end users of dashboards or views, giving them the ability to change the current value of the parameter. Parameter values may even be changed with actions, as you'll see in Chapter 8, Telling a Data Story with Dashboards.

The value of a parameter is global so that if the value is changed, every view and calculation in the workbook that references the parameter will use the new value. Parameters provide another way to provide rich interactivity to the end users of your dashboards and visualizations.

Parameters can be used to allow anyone interacting with your...