Study Notes 7.23.16

from Tableau 201
 
First, holy cow! What an awesome resource Ryan has put together!! 
Shaping data

• It's optimal to have one column representing one field (layout is vertical not horizontal)
• One recommendation for time: if it's presented as 1Q16, add a column to data for the actual date (3/31/16) 

Measures vs Dimensions

• Measure is quantitative and dependent (i.e Sales by itself just gives you a total but a  dimension will give it context (sales by region) 
• General rule of thumb: measure is a number, dimension is what to slice & dice by
• A good question to ask when you have numbers as data items, does it make sense to sum it up? If yes, then measure. If no, then it's likely a dimension. 
• When null is the first value, Tableau may misclassify because the first value is a string. 

Discrete vs Continuous 

• Discrete is blue, continuous is green pill (Emma Whyte would smack me for using the incorrect term of pill).
• Discrete fields draw headers (which can be sorted) while continuous draw axes (cannot be sorted).

Level of Detail for a View

• The detail marks card allows you add a dimension which can take a view from a high level of aggregation to be more granular (defined by that dimension). 
  • It's not the only way but another way that may help the viz process flow better.