All Visualizations Stories

Distinct counts are critical to analytics, whether it's counting individual patients in a hospital, the number of unique retail transactions, or the number of airplanes in a fleet. Taking distinct counts in Tableau is incredibly easy with a one-click way to change aggregations to count distinct. It is also, however, one of the more intensive calculations to perform and can be very slow, especially if you're data's huge. I'd like to share a few alternative ways to get the same answer as a count distinct.

Header Concatenation: This was a new problem for me. Heck, it was a new word for me up until recently. Janet Shen, one of the incredible Viz Magicians from Tableau Professional Services sent me a great "How To" guide for overriding our default settings and I couldn't wait to share it. The useful content is ALL her. The silliness is all me. Hope you find this as helpful as I did! Click inside to get the step-by-step tutorial.

As I have been preparing the Filters, Filters and More Filters session (part of the Jedi Track) at #TCC12 I came across a neat and very useful trick using filters with table calculations. I will be using our Sample Superstore data to show you this trick.

Chutes and Ladders is a popular game in our family; it's great for evening "together time" without the need for deep strategizing. If you played the game as a kid, you probably enjoyed the back-and-forth of advancing up the board and then sliding back down. And if you ever played it as an adult, you've probably wondered when the game is going to end! I've got some answers and advice.