Hi all smarty hats!
Today I am going to show the use of Groups and Sets in Tableau and make another great Viz.
In this Viz, I am going to show you a way to suggest best Startup out of 1000 startups to invest for according to the following 3 metrics: 1) High Revenue, 2) Low Expenses, 3) Top Growth. We will only consider the metrics belonging to year 2015.
We will start with a Scatter Plot.
By dragging Revenue and Expenses on rows and columns shelves and then deselecting the Aggregate Measures option from the Analysis menu of Tableau, all the individual points are plotted as a scatter plot. Every individual point is a startup.
Now, we want to highlight all those startups having Revenue, lets say, more than $ 7M (since these are the startups our potential investors would be interested in) . We also want this threshold to be dynamic, since we don't know the exact amount our investors would be interested and perhaps we want to leave some room for some ad-hoc analysis.
This can be done in following steps:
Create a parameter (Expense Cutoff) of type Integer. Now this parameter can be changed on the go.
Now, create a set of High Revenue companies. Select 'Use all' from General Tab. Go to Condition Tab and configure as shown in the screenshot.
Similarly, make a set of Low Expense Startups. While creating the formula, be aware that we want low Expense companies, so use '<' instead of '>'
Right click any of the above two sets you've created and select 'Create Combined Set'. Select the option Shared members in both sets. This will be 'Target Quadrant'.
By putting this combined set in color of marks card, you can highlight the set of Startups having low Expenses and high Revenue in 2015. If you right click the parameter you've created and select 'Show parameter control', you will be able to dynamically change the thresholds for highlighting the startups.
Pro Tip: Reversing the values of Expense axis will help you to make a better sense of your Viz.
Till now, we have worked on a Scatter plot which is pretty good in highlighting the startups falling in our area of interest, the threshold for which could be manually entered by the user.
Next part: To incorporate the third dimension in this plot, which is Growth.
This third dimension will be included in the plot in the form of shapes. For this, we will create a new set.
But first, lets create a new parameter to take input from a user how many top growth startups needs to be highlighted. Lets call it Growth leaders. Now we will create a set using this parameter.
While creating the set, select 'Use all' in the General tab and then move to Top. Select the radio button of 'By field' and select Top and then select our parameter 'Growth leaders' instead of a hard-coded value. Select '2015 Growth %' in the variable field and select any aggregation. This aggregation will not affect our results since we are working at the most granular level. At this level, Sum and Average of a data point will return that point itself.
Now drag this set to shapes part of the marks card. Adjust the shape as per your taste. Try selecting the shapes which contrasts well on each other since you want to differentiate them. Doing this is difficult.
Pro Tip: In order to add contrast and make the two types differentiate well, you can try adding color to them.
But this is tricky!! Lets do it anyway.
Notice that you already have a combined set called Target Quadrant in colors. If you try to add this Top Growth set too, it will automatically remove the old pill and add this instead, which you don't want. What you want is to highlight the Top growth startups in the highlighted part of the quadrant. You want both. In order to do this, select both the pills you want to apply color on by pressing ctrl (I have only worked on Windows) and then drag both of them to color in marks card. And Voila! Select the appropriate combination of the colors you want and you are done!
Now, keeping everything else constant, if you increase the 'Growth Leaders', it should increase the x shaped object in the required quadrant. (whatever x=shape you've chosen). After applying some formatting, this is what you will possibly get.
See, how far you have come!! Congratulations :)
Now after applying some formatting, adding reference lines, removing axis, changing Tooltips, adjusting colors, adding title, adding a table of growth rate (need help on this?) and mixing some 'Chemical X' you will be able to make a pretty interesting dashboard of yours.
Have a look on mine.
Have questions of suggestions?
I would love to talk! Go ahead.
Thanks :)