Creating bar graphs
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
As bar graphs are very easy to understand, they are the most common type of graphs. The graphs that have a horizontal orientation are called bar graphs and the graphs that have a vertical orientation are called column graphs. The length of the bar represents the quantity of a particular measure. They are best used with categorical information, such as gender, state, regions, countries, business types, and others. One very important thing to note with the column bar charts is that this type of chart's y axis must always start at zero, otherwise it is very difficult and misleading to encode the length of the bar to a measure.
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, perform the following steps to create a simple bar graph:
- Drag-and-drop State into the Rows shelf.
- Drag-and-drop Profit into the Columns shelf.
- You should see the Profit totals by State in the Columns area in plain numbers.
- To change the text representation to a bar graph, click on the Show Me button on the toolbar (shown in the following screenshot).
- From the Show Me toolbar, select horizontal bars as shown in the following screenshot:
By changing the default behavior of showing text tables to showing bar charts, we can make it easier for the reader to compare various measures by comparing the lengths of the different bars. In addition, since bar charts are common in various publications, the reader is adept at understanding bar charts.
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