Treemaps and Table Calculations:An Exploration of Colors, Sorting

and Partitioning in Tableau

Jonathan DrummeyQuality Management Data Analyst

Southern Maine Medical Centerjonathan.drummey@gmail.com

West

South

East

Central

What You Will Learn

• Making Sense of Non-Cartesian Layouts• Putting Multiple Pills on the Color Shelf• How Tableau Builds Treemaps• A Lot About Sorting – And how to answer a Tableau brain teaser

• Basic Addressing and Partitioning• Using Restarting Every and At the Level

Non-Cartesian Layout• Mark stacking is on by default for most Mark Types

– Triggered by more in overall level of detail than displayed in the view• Requires no continuous (green) pills on Rows or Columns• Explicitly used by Treemaps, Packed Bubbles, and Word Clouds

• Signs that Mark Stacking is on:– Left aligned numbers and/or text with odd layout– Ellipses (…) indicate that there is more data in the cell than Tableau

can display– Big view area – fills the screen and potentially more than necessary

for the marks you can see

Multiple Discrete (blue) Pillson the Color Shelf• Top pill assigns categorical colors from the Tableau 20 palette• Least saturated color in each color range is always the same• All other pills create a “set” of the combined members within the color ranges

defined by the top pill• Colors are evenly distributed from darkest to lightest based on the # of members of

the “set”• Once created can be edited

– If that is done, new color values will also need to be manually set• Lose color highlighting if a discrete measure is part of the set of colors

• Three ways to turn this on:– Shift+Click and/or Ctrl+Click to select multiple pills from Data window and drag them onto

Color Shelf– Shift+Drag a pill to add it to the Color Shelf– Use the shelf type icon menu that is located next to the pill on the Marks Card to change to

Color

Color Assignment Issue #1: Dark to Light• Dimension pills on color – no problem, use pill sort.

• When a discrete measure is used on color, color ranges are assigned by either the alphanumeric or manual sort of the measure, with the first item getting order the darkest (most saturated) to the last getting the lightest (least saturated)

• Workaround is to use calculated fields that have the desired alphanumeric sort and use those on Color instead– If a less messy Color Legend is desired, use a separate worksheet

Color Legend w/hidden data or BYO Color Legend worksheet

Color Assignment Issue #2: Sorting• Dimension pills on color – need to set up sort before applying Color, or

reassign palette following sort.

• Discrete measure colors are assigned based on the alphanumeric sort of the “set” of discrete values

• Marks are positioned by the sort on the pills– setting a pill sort changes the order marks are displayed, not color

assignment

• Workaround is to use calculated fields that have the proper sort– Combined Fields, Build Your Own Combined Fields– String manipulations– Table calcs

Color Assignment Issue #3:Distribution

• Colors are evenly distributed based on the cardinality of the “set”

• Not the value of the item

• Workarounds are:– Do some sort of binning (if data is dense enough) – Manually set colors– Not use categorical colors and instead use

continuous pill on Color

Treemap Layout

• Non-Cartesian chart– Tableau totally determines layout

• A grouping level per dimension on Level of Detail• In each grouping level, largest mark or subgroup

in upper left, smallest mark or subgroup in lower right

• Sized and ordered by the pill on the Size Shelf• Won’t overlap labels

Dimension Pill Sorts• Alphanumeric• Manual• by Measure

What Kinds of Sorts are Usedin Tableau and Where

Pill Typesand

Arrangements

Color & Size Assignment

Legend Ordering

Mark Layout

TreemapLayout

Table CalcComputation

AdvancedCompute

Using

Top NFilters

Top N Sort

HierarchicalSort

Advanced…Field Sort

Measure Pill Sorts

• Alphanumeric • Manual

Column 1

Sort

Column 2

Value A

Sort

Value B

…Value N

SortSort

And so on for eachadditional Column…

Hierarchical Sorting

Tableau’s Sorting

Column 1

Sort

Column 2

Sort

Column 3

SortData

View

Hierarchical Sorting in Tableau

Column 1

Sort

Column 2 Column 3

Data

View

Column 1+2

Sort

Column 1+2+3

Sort

All Other Dimensions

in the View*

Addressing (Compute Using) and Partitioning: Choosing 1 Dimension

Partitioning

*Discrete (blue pill) regular aggregate Measures that have unchecked Ignore in Table Calculations automatically become part of partitioning.

Compute a result for each distinct address, i.e. each value of the chosen dimension

Restart the computation for any new value of the remaining Dimensions

Chosen Dimension

Addressing

Dimension 1Dimension 2

Addressing and Partitioning:Advanced Compute Using & Sort

PartitioningDimension 3Dimension 4Dimension 5Dimension 6

Addressing

Two sort options:• Automatic: Use the pill sort from the view (e.g. get a hierarchical sort)• Field: Sort the “set” of addressing dimensions by the chosen field

Dimension 1Dimension 2

Addressing and Partitioning:Restarting Every

PartitioningDimension 3Dimension 4Dimension 5Dimension 6

Addressing

Restarting Every keeps the sort defined by the table calc, and addsthe chosen dimension and all dimensions above it to the partitioning.

West

South

East

Central

Dimension 1Dimension 2

Addressing and Partitioning:At the Level

PartitioningDimension 3Dimension 4Dimension 5Dimension 6

Addressing

At the Level keeps the sort defined by the table calc, and increments the chosen dimension on it’s position within the partition, while dimensions below that don’t cause incrementing of ordinal table calcs like INDEX()

Know your data

Know your goal

Figure out how what shape the data needs to be in (given your knowledge of Tableau)

Set up the data and computations

Build the view

Review

• Covered a lot of ground but…– 3 minutes to build the entire view from connecting to data

to done (on a bumpy bus ride)

• Treemaps and Non-Cartesian Layouts• Putting Multiple Pills on the Color Shelf• A Lot About Sorting • Intro to Table Calculations– YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary) disclaimer about factors

affecting table calculation results

Thanks!

Jonathan DrummeyQuality Management Data Analyst

Southern Maine Medical Centerjonathan.drummey@gmail.com

http://drawingwithnumbers.artisart.org