From the course: Tableau 2024.1: Essential Training

Change the summary operation - Tableau Tutorial

From the course: Tableau 2024.1: Essential Training

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Change the summary operation

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When you visualize in Tableau, most of the time you will want to find the sum of whatever data you have collected. For example, they could be the total of sales as are displayed in the current visualization. However, you can change that summary based on your needs. I'll demonstrate using the sample file named 02_06_Summary, which you can find in the Chapter_02 folder of the Exercise Files collection. In this workbook, I have a text table that summarizes the sum of order total. That is the sum of all sales for my various product categories. I can verify that I am finding the sum by going to the marks card and looking at the pill here, so I have some of order total. If I want to change the summary operation, I can move the mouse pointer over that pill on the marks card and then click the down arrow at the right edge. And then where I have measure currently displaying some, I move my mouse pointer over that and the flyout menu appears with the other operations, that is summary operations that I can use. So I have average, median, count, count, distinct and then other elements such as minimum and maximum. If I want to display the average of sales within each of the product categories, then I can click average. And I see that light bulbs have very low average order values and grid tie inverters, which are something that industrial solar or wind applications would use, are very high. I could also change from average and then point to measure, which is now average, and find the maximum value. So I'll click there and I get the largest orders. And it's interesting that the average order for a grid tie inverters was over 5000, but it is not nearly the largest maximum batteries are much higher, which is surprising and probably worth looking into, and then installations for renewable energy such as solar panels and wind harvesters also have very high average orders. So I've already discovered some interesting things about my data just by changing the summary operation.

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