Analyzing individual values, such as the largest sales day for a month, provides terrific insights into your business. Another way to visualize your data is to separate it into bins. For example, you might want to know how many days had less than $1,000 in sales, how many between $1,000 and $2,000, and so on. In this movie, I’ll show you how to visualize data in this manner by using histograms.
- [Narrator] When you analyze values in Tableau you will often look for specific values, such as the number of guests in your hotel on a particular day. However, if you want to look at overall patterns of data there are many ways to do that, but one great way is to create what is called a histogram. A histogram is a vertical bar chart or column chart that shows how often that you get measurements within specific ranges of values, also called bins.
In this movie, I will show you how to create a histogram. My sample file is the histogram workbook, which you can find in the chapter ten folder of your exercise files collections. To create a histogram you only need one value, and that is a measure, which in this case, is called guest count. My guess count is the number of guests that are present in my hotel on a particular day. So I'm not looking at dates. I don't care about the values in any specific dates.
Instead what I want to know is how often my guest count falls within a certain range, and I can discover that by creating a histogram. First thing I'll do is I will drag the guest count measure to the data area in the middle of the visualization. And I see my sum is 27,901. To create the histogram I will go to the toolbar and click the show me button. And on the next to last row I see that the histogram button is highlighted so I'll click that.
And I'll hide show me by clicking its title bar, and I can see the distribution for each of these bins. Tableau created the bins for me so I didn't have to worry about that. And I see that I had 14 occurrences where I had between 286 and 299 guests. So 286 to one less than 299, which is 298. I can tell the range of a bin by hovering my mouse pointer over a particular bar, so let's say I'll go to this one here with a count of 12.
I see that it starts at 245, which checks out visually with the x-axis or horizontal axis. And if I move over to the right, and hover over the next one, I see it starts at 258, so the last value in the previous bin and the one to the left is 257. And I can do the same for other values. Now I can perform a visual evaluation of the data. I see that I have a lot of visitors between about say 250 and maybe 340, that seems to be the center of the curve.
And visitor counts under 200 and greater than about 370 are pretty rare. I only have about 100 observations in this group, so I would probably want to evaluate my visitor counts over a longer period of time so that I could get a better idea of what the data actually looks like.
Author
Updated
5/10/2017Released
10/13/2016- Managing data sources and visualizations
- Managing Tableau worksheets and workbooks
- Creating custom calculations and fields
- Analyzing data using statistical tools
- Sorting and filtering Tableau data
- Defining groups and sets
- Creating and pivoting crosstabs
- Formatting Tableau visualizations
- Creating basic charts
- Annotating and formatting charts
- Mapping geographic data
- Creating dashboard and actions
Skill Level Intermediate
Duration
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Q. This course was updated 5/10/2017. What topics were part of the update?
A. Topics related to version 10.1 and 10.2 were part of the course update.
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Introduction
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Welcome59s
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1. Introducing Tableau
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Downloading Tableau2m 36s
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Installing Tableau drivers2m 15s
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Getting help in Tableau2m 2s
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2. Managing Data Sources and Visualizations
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Connecting to a data source1m 56s
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Joining related data sources3m 27s
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Cleaning up source data2m 37s
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3. Managing Tableau Worksheets and Workbooks
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Saving your changes2m 24s
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Creating a packaged workbook1m 33s
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4. Creating Custom Calculations and Fields
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Creating a calculated field3m 21s
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Adding a table calculation3m 46s
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5. Analyzing Data Using Statistical Tools
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Displaying the Summary Card2m 30s
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Forecasting future values3m 58s
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6. Sorting and Filtering Tableau Data
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Creating a selection filter2m 58s
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Creating a wildcard filter3m 50s
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Creating a condition filter2m 53s
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Creating a top filter2m 46s
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7. Defining Groups and Sets
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Defining a group1m 55s
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Defining a set2m 14s
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Combining sets3m 31s
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Editing and deleting sets1m 37s
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8. Creating and Pivoting Crosstabs
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Creating a crosstab3m 20s
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Unpivoting a crosstab1m 50s
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9. Formatting Tableau Visualizations
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Resizing a visualization3m 39s
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10. Creating Basic Charts
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Creating pie charts3m 45s
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Creating scatter plots3m 19s
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Identifying data clusters3m 54s
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Creating histograms3m 6s
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Creating a treemap3m 26s
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11. Annotating and Formatting Charts
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Adding a text box to a chart2m 25s
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12. Mapping Geographic Data
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Creating a basic map4m 24s
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Setting map options3m 46s
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Defining custom regions3m 57s
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13. Creating Dashboards and Actions
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Creating a dashboard3m 54s
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Defining a filter action2m 40s
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Defining a highlight action3m 44s
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Defining a URL action2m 36s
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14. What's New in Tableau 10.1 and 10.2
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Export data to CSV files1m 20s
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Scale maps dynamically1m 34s
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Conclusion
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Further resources1m 17s
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Video: Creating histograms