Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Failure to Identify -or- Who is that mystery measure?

Table with One Measure – Nice Numbers, But For What?


This visualization is incredibly easy to create.
Unfortunately, it's impossible to interpret meaningfully because Tableau doesn't provide any information about what the numbers shown mean.
There are ways to have Tableau present a label for the numbers, but they're hacks taking advantage of side effects in Tableau's mechanisms to produce what should be a first-order functionality.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that Tableau should label everything it shows by default, making interpretation clear and easy.
We shouldn't have to 'fix' things like this, that shouldn't be broken in the first place.

Table with Two Measures – Each Clearly Labeled


This visualization can be created from the One-Measure table with a simple double-click of the second measure.
Strangely, when adding the second measure Tableau finds it appropriate to label them both. Why is this? Why label two but not one? Is one measure, presented solo, somehow not worthy of being indentified?
It's a bona fide mystery.

The Tableau UI for Two-Measure Table

The Tableau UI for One-Measure Table

When adding the second measure, Tableau also adds "Measure Names" to the columns shelf, which in turn provides the Measures' labeling. This seems all nice and reasonable: "Measure Names" => labels.
So it also seems reasonable to assume that adding "Measure Names" to the One-Measure table's Columns shelf will label the single column with the appropriate Measure Name. (Even though this is an imposition upon the User, making him/her do something to make up for Tableau's shortcoming).
But it doesn't work as intended.
Tableau really doesn't know what to do with "Measure Names" on the Columns shelf when only one Measure is in the viz. here's what happens:

Tableau obligingly, and erroneously, informs us that there is "No Measure Value" in the viz.
This is wrong, and makes it harder to convince people that Tableau is easy and trustworthy.

5 comments:

  1. You can place the Measure Names pill on the Filter shelf, and keep only the field you want.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Excellent point, Joe.

      My follow-on is that if that's Tableau's mechanism for handling this situation then it should go ahead and do it for me.
      It's another entry in my list of side-effects that we shouldn't have to employ to do what Tableau should do for us.

      Delete
  2. Chris Gerrard, keep at it. You crack me up in your coments and yes there are people who appreciate you asking the why questions. I too wonder about many of these things that we shouldn't have to hack or be a wookie or jedi or whatever.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Chris,

    I have had to ask myself about 1,000 times over the past 6 or 7 years why Tableau does this. It is a frictional hot-spot that needs to be fixed! Right on, you nailed it.

    Ken

    ReplyDelete
  4. Chris,

    I have had to ask myself about 1,000 times over the past 6 or 7 years why Tableau does this. It is a frictional hot-spot that needs to be fixed! Right on, you nailed it.

    Ken

    ReplyDelete