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Tableau Number Function: ABS




I have been working with Tableau since 2014, but I have still a feeling that my knowledge about this software not good enough. When I rebuild dashboards from tableau.public I am fascinating how some people can create amazing formulas and thus it makes the calculation of data sets easier.

Sometimes I got stuck by creating of graphs and I do some calculations with data in Excel before I visualize them. Otherwise, you can find the definition of every function by creating of calculation field. But, honestly, are this definitions always clearly enough? For me not and I am done by doing long calculations with Excel. 😠 I like my work and I want to have more fun and not do such long calculation with Excel!

I took up a challenge and decided to go through every function in tableau in order to understand how they work. 

I would like to begin with ABS function. 

ABS function is very easy one, as it used to get an absolute value of a number from a negative one. As an example I have chosen two numbers from Super Store: Profit and Sales. At first I would like to generate negative numbers. In order to do that I created a calculation field [Profit]-[Sales] as "negative number". (I know it doesn't make any sense, but on this way I have negative numbers)




In the second step I created a calculation field with ABS function:
abs([Negative number]) as "ABS absolute number" and drop this field to my table: 




And tada... 😍
As you can see tableau convert all negative numbers to absolute numbers.

It was very easy, wasn't it? 




Kommentare

  1. venkat25. Juni 2017 um 22:42

    Hats off to your presence of mind..I really enjoyed reading your blog. I really appreciate your information which you shared with us.

    Tableau Online Training

    AntwortenLöschen
  2. likitha20. November 2018 um 22:02

    Thanks for sharing valuable information. Your blogs were helpful to tableau learners. I
    request to update the blog through step-by-step. Also, find the tableau news at
    Tableau Online Course Blog.

    AntwortenLöschen

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