Calculating percentages
by Matt Floyd, Ashley Ohmann, Ashutosh Nandeshwar, Jen Stirrup
Tableau: Creating Interactive Data Visualizations
- Tableau: Creating Interactive Data Visualizations
- Table of Contents
- Tableau: Creating Interactive Data Visualizations
- Tableau: Creating Interactive Data Visualizations
- Credits
- Preface
- 1. Module 1
- 1. A Short Dash to Dashboarding!
- 2. Summarizing Your Data for Dashboards
- 3. Interacting with Data for Dashboards
- 4. Using Dashboards to Get Results
- 5. Putting the Dash into Dashboards
- 6. Making Dashboards Relevant
- 7. Visual Best Practices
- 2. Module 2
- 1. Connecting to Data Sources
- Introduction
- Connecting to text files
- Connecting to Excel files
- Connecting to Access databases
- Connecting to a SQL Server
- Pasting from a clipboard
- Connecting to other databases
- Connecting to Windows Azure Marketplace
- Understanding dimensions and measures
- Changing data types
- Applying filters
- Merging multiple data sources
- 2. Creating Univariate Charts
- 3. Creating Bivariate Charts
- 4. Creating Multivariate Charts
- 5. Creating Maps
- 6. Calculating User-defined Fields
- 7. Customizing and Saving
- 8. Exporting and Sharing
- 9. Exploring Advanced Features
- 1. Connecting to Data Sources
- 3. Module 3
- 1. Getting Started with Tableau Public
- 2. Tableau Public Interface Features
- 3. Connecting to Data
- 4. Visualization – Tips and Types
- 5. Calculations
- 6. Level of Detail and Table Calculations
- 7. Dashboard Design and Styling
- 8. Filters and Actions
- 9. Publishing Your Work
- A. Bibliography
- Index
One of the most common type of measures is the percentage of a value within a population. Tableau provides options for converting values in a row or column to fractions of row or column totals; however, we can also create new fields with some calculated values presented as percentages.
Let's use the sample file Sample – Superstore Sales (Excel). Open a new worksheet and select Sample – Superstore Sales (Excel) as the data source.
Once the data is loaded on the worksheet, perform the following steps to create a new calculated field:
- To calculate the profit to sales ratio, right-click on the Measures pane and select Create Calculated Field.
- In the Name box, enter
My Profit Ratio. - In the Formula box, enter
sum([Profit])/sum([Sales])as shown in the following screenshot:
- Right-click on My Profit Ratio from the Measures pane, expand Default Properties, and select Number Format as shown in the following screenshot:
- In the Number Format options box, select Percentage and hit OK.
In the calculated field, we aggregated the Profit and Sales fields before dividing them. By calculating this way, we summed the Profit and Sales fields individually and then performed the division. This is different from dividing profit and sales first and then summing those values—this type of operation is a row-level operation and is suitable for many occasions. However, we have to remember to aggregate fields to avoid unexpected results.
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