Creating area charts
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
An area chart is an extension of a line chart. The area chart shows the line of the measure but fills the area below the line to emphasize on the value of the measure. A special case of area chart is a stacked area chart, which shows a line per measure and the area between the lines is filled. Tableau's implementation of area charts uses one date variable and one or more measures.
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 new worksheet, perform the following steps to create an area chart:
- Click on the Show Me button to bring the Show Me toolbar on the screen.
- Select Order Date from Dimensions and Order Quantity from Measures by clicking and holding the Ctrl key.
- Click on Area charts (continuous) from the Show Me toolbar.
- Drag-and-drop Order Date into the Columns shelf next to YEAR(Order Date).
- Expand YEAR(Order Date), seen on the right-hand side, by clicking on the plus sign.
- Drag-and-drop Region from Dimensions into the the Rows shelf to the left of SUM(Order Quantity). The chart should look like the one in the following screenshot:
When we added Order Date for the first time, Tableau, by default, aggregated the date field by year; therefore, we added Order Date again to create aggregation by quarter of the Order Date. We also added Region to create facets on the regions that provide trends of order quantity over time.
A blog post by visual.ly, an information graphics company, discusses the key differences between line charts and area charts. You can find this post at http://blog.visual.ly/line-vs-area-charts/.
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