One of the most powerful aspects of Tableau is that charts can be filtered using the same drag-and-drop user interface that you’ve been learning over the last few chapters. If we want to filter out all the players who have less than 100 at-bats, for instance, we would only need to drag the AB (for at-bats) field into the Filters shelf above the Marks card, and then fill out the resulting dialog box.
We can drag the slider to the left or right, or enter a number into the text entry box to set the minimum number of at-bats, or we can filter several different ways using the tiles across the top. We’ll click OK with the setting We can drag the slider to the left or right, or enter a number into the text entry box to set the minimum number of at-bats, or we can filter several different ways using the tiles across the top. We’ll click OK with the setting.
Notice the green AB pill in the Filters section in the top left. We’ll consider other types of filters as we go along. One other important control to learn is the Quick Filter control. If we hover over the green AB pill and click the small down arrow that appears within the pill, we can select Show Quick Filter, and Tableau will place a slider control on the canvas for us. It can be moved around, and I’ve moved it below the Marks card.
It becomes very easy to filter the view using Quick Filters. Drag the slider to change the minimum number of at-bats required to appear in the bar chart, and see players’ names come and go from the list.
To tidy up the view, we can change the view to the dot chart discussed and add the Rank field covered The resulting batting average dot chart.
This was a fairly straightforward example, as the proportions were already computed for us and included as fields in the data set. After.we learned how to filter out the players who didn’t have sufficient at-bats, we were able to apply some of the same techniques to create the final views.
What happens when the proportions aren’t neatly calculated for us, and when it’s not a simple matter of creating a ratio from two existing fields using a calculated field? For example, what if we wanted to know what percentage of the team’s overall home runs were hit by each player?
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