Three essential Tableau concepts

The road to the mastery of Tableau begins with three essential concepts. We will consider each of the following in turn:

  • Dimensions and measures
  • Row level, aggregate level, and table level
  • Continuous and discrete

Essential concept 1 - dimensions and measures

Tableau categorizes every field from an underlying data source as either a dimension or a measure. A dimension is qualitative or, to use another word, categorical. A measure is quantitative or aggregable. A measure is usually a number but may be an aggregated, non-numeric field, such as MAX(Order Date). A dimension is usually a text, Boolean, or date field, but may also be a number, such as Order_ID. Dimensions provide meaning to numbers by slicing those numbers ...

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