Category Archives: Calculations
Calculations in Tableau are Powerful! These posts either deal extensively with calculations or demonstrate techniques that use calculations.
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Reshaping your data right in Tableau: Materialized Path Hierarchies
Posted on April 17, 2017 by Joshua Milligan in All, Calculations, Data Blending & Joining, Data Shape & Structure, Tips and Tricks.I recently came across this post by Simona Loffredo in which she describes a certain type of data structure, why it wasn’t ideal for analysis, and how to reshape it using Alteryx. While I love Alteryx and really love how it can be used alongside Tableau, I get especially excited when I can do something without […]
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Periodic Snapshots with Tableau Incremental Refresh
Posted on January 3, 2017 by Joshua Milligan in All, Calculations, Data Blending & Joining, Dates, Level of Detail Calcs.Happy New Year! Even as 2016 was winding down, I found myself with a challenge dealing with time. And I thought I’d share some of my thoughts about a possible approach. Here’s the challenge: You have a database with transactional data, that is data where the rows are inserted, updated and deleted based on events. […]
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Tableau Forum Fun: Grand totals next to columns
Posted on October 10, 2016 by Joshua Milligan in All, Calculations, DataViz, Tableau Forum Fun, Tableau Tip Tuesday, Tips and Tricks, Uncategorized.I really love the Tableau Community Forums. If you haven’t ever experienced the forums, you really should! It’s a vibrant community all centered around helping people learn Tableau and solve real world problems! You can participate as a helper and provide answers to individuals who are asking Tableau questions or ask for help if you have a […]
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“Little” Tableau 10.0 Features: Clusters as Partitions for Table Calcs
Posted on July 6, 2016 by Joshua Milligan in "Little" Features, All, Calculations, New Features, Tips and Tricks.As I’ve been beta testing Tableau 10.0 and working on a new edition of Learning Tableau, I’ve been making all kinds of little discoveries. Big new Tableau 10.0 features like clustering, cross database joins, cross data source filters, union updates, Google Sheets are exciting! But little tweaks, cool UI additions, and little new features the Tableau […]
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Tableau Quick Tip: Create a Gap in Tabular Reports
Posted on July 5, 2016 by Joshua Milligan in All, Calculations, Tableau Tip Tuesday, Tips and Tricks.Ever design a table in Tableau and wish you could insert a gap between columns or rows? Maybe you want to show several values, but set one apart from the others. Something like this: Or maybe you want to create some space between categories, like this: Whatever the reason, in some cases, it’s actually quite […]
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Tweaking Views in Tableau
Posted on February 16, 2016 by Joshua Milligan in All, Calculations, Dashboards, DataViz, Level of Detail Calcs, Storytelling & Commentary.In a previous post I shared how even a small tweak to a dataviz can change the perspective of the data story. The example I gave demonstrated how a view that used absolute time (with date defining the axis) presents a different story and highlights different insights versus a similar view that used relative time […]
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Partial Period Panic
Posted on January 5, 2016 by Joshua Milligan in All, Calculations, DataViz, Dates, Tableau Tip Tuesday.The Problem of Partial Periods So you built out that incredible Tableau* time series viz showing sales per week or number of widgets produced per month. Everything looked great as you wrapped this up right before Christmas break. Profits were up, sales were great, trends were positive. You come into the office excited to start […]
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The Assignment that Made Me Fall in Love
Posted on December 13, 2015 by Joshua Milligan in All, Calculations, Fun, Storytelling & Commentary.The Assignment When I was in junior high, my math teacher, Mrs. White gave the class an amazing assignment. She gave everyone an overhead transparency (remember those?) with three points drawn on it — labeled 1, 2, and 3. They were the corners of an equilateral triangle. Then she gave the following instructions: Draw a […]
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Tableau and Cubes (OLAP)
Posted on September 23, 2015 by Joshua Milligan in All, Calculations, Tips and Tricks.At some point, I got labeled as a “Tableau cube expert.” The funny thing is, when I first acquired this label I just barely knew how to spell OLAP. But over the years, I’ve gained some experience working with Tableau and cubes. And I get questions almost weekly about how Tableau works with cubes and for […]
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Never Ending Navigation: Buttons that Deselect Themselves
Posted on September 3, 2015 by Joshua Milligan in All, Calculations, Dashboards, Tips and Tricks.Navigation buttons can make a series of dashboards easier to use. The most common approach has been using a view that shows an image, shape, or text for the user to click to trigger an action that filters into another dashboard. The main issue is that once a mark in the navigation view is selected […]
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Want to understand how Tableau works and how you can use it like a master?
Joshua Milligan is a three-time Tableau Zen Master. His passion is training, mentoring, and helping people gain insights and make decisions based on their data through data visualization using Tableau. He is a principal consultant at Teknion Data Solutions, where he has served clients in numerous industries since 2004.
Joshua served as technical reviewer on several Tableau titles and is the author of the book Learning Tableau.
