CUSTOMIZED TABLE CALCULATIONS

You have gotten a first impression of how powerful Table Calculations can be and how quickly you can set them up. However, not all use cases are covered by the Quick Table Calculations options.

For more advanced use cases, you will need to use Table Calculation functions in calculated fields, instead. To illustrate this, let's construct a bump chart.

Bump Charts

Bump charts are a popular and effective solution for visualizing changes in rankings over time. For example, you can visualize how the ranking of product categories changes over a year. Seasonal fluctuations may also become apparent when the data is aggregated at the month level.

Let's explore this by creating a bump chart with Table Calculations using the Superstore data set. Start by creating a new calculated field. Call it Sales Rank, and enter the following formula (see also Figure 5.7):

Figure 5.7 Table Calculation to compute the rank according to sales.

RANK(SUM([Sales])) 

As the...