Creating line 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
Although line charts are best used for time-series data to observe trends by various time units, such as day, week, month, quarter, and year, they could be used for other types of data as well; however, the ups and downs in the lines themselves are less important in such cases.
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 line chart:
- Drag-and-drop Order Date into the Columns shelf. Tableau, by default, will show YEAR(Order Date).
- Drag-and-drop Sales into the Rows shelf.
- To observe the trends by month of orders, click on YEAR(Order Date), which is shown in the Columns shelf, and click on Month, as shown in the following screenshot:
- Drag-and-drop Order Date into the Columns shelf again, but this time in front of the MONTH(Order Date) field. This change will show the trend by month of every year, as shown in this following screenshot:
Line charts are quite effective in representing trends over time. These trends, however, could be misrepresented if improper zoom level, axis scale units, or aspect ratios are used. For example, if a reader is observing a line chart that has hour as the unit, the reader may think that the observed measure fluctuates quite often. But if the axis unit is changed to months, the lines will show trends over a longer time period and will not show major fluctuations, as shown in the chart with hour as the axis unit. The chart designer should carefully select the unit of time for the x axis.
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