Vizible Difference

In a recent post, C. Palo has asked for a "top N and others" solution. There is a KB article on the subject. But it's based on sets, which won't work for C. Palo because she has a few filters. So the top N will be dynamic while sets based approach only provides static top N, regardless of filters.

I would present here a tutorial on the topic. It is based on an approach by Tableau Zen Master Richard Leeke while using a different filter. Also would I explain some of the intricacies. This approach works on filtered results if any.

The example uses the superstore data set where we will show the top N countries with the highest sales, and group the others in a single bar.

Step 1. Create an integer parameter [Top N]

Step 2.

While doing research on "Ignore in Table Calculations", I stumbled upon a post by Tableau's Patrick Van Der Hyde in which he mentioned Size() for histogram. This reminded me of Tableau Zen Master Joshua Mulligan who also used Size() for histogram in a different way. Both solutions inspired me to explore all the options on histogram using Size(). I am a histogram junkie after all.

There seems always yet another way of doing things in Tableau, possibly a better way.

In a response to my recent article Dynamic Histogram Over Time, Tableau Zen Master Jonathan Drummey came up with a few amazing tricks from his sophisticated toolbox to offer a couple of alternative solutions. The tricks seem to be the inventions of Joe Mako, another Zen Master. One of the solutions using Tableau's rank functions requires less steps. It reveals an intimate relationship between histogram and rank functions.