Creating heat maps
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
A heat map is a visual representation of numbers in a table or a grid such that the bigger numbers are encoded by darker colors or bigger sizes and the smaller numbers by lighter colors or smaller sizes. This type of representation makes the reader's pattern detection from the data easier.
Let's use the same 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 heat map chart:
- Click on the Show Me button to bring the Show Me toolbar on the screen.
- While holding the Ctrl key, click on Sub-Category (under Products), Region, and Ship Mode from Dimensions and Profit from Measures.
- Click on the heat maps chart icon on the Show Me toolbar.
- Drag-and-drop Profit from Measures into the Color Marks box. The generated chart should look like the one in the following screenshot:
When we created the chart for the first time, Tableau assigned various sizes to the square boxes, but when we placed Profit as a color mark, red was used for low amounts of profit and green was used for higher amounts of profit. This made spotting of patterns very easy. Binders and Binder Accessories, shipped by Regular Air in the Central region, generated very high amounts of profit and Tables, shipped by Delivery Trucks in the East region, generated very low amounts of profit (it actually created losses for the company).
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