Understanding Table Calculations Using Fixed LODs

 

Table calculations aren't the easiest thing to understand.  I struggle with them often.  I can typically get them to work the way I want them to, but it's often through a bit of trial and error.  However, Fixed LODs come really naturally to me and I have a very strong understanding of how they work.

Recently, I was discovered something while working with Table Calculations that, for me, was an "aha moment".  I realized that you can pretty easily translate fixed LODs into table calculations.  This really opened my eyes and helped me to gain a much deeper understanding of table calcs.  I shared it with my brother, Ken, and he said that Mina Ozgen tweeted about this back in 2017.  Mina is brilliant and an absolute master of Table Calcs.  

Although Mina shared this information before, this discovery was very profound for me and I thought it may be beneficial to many others.  If you have a good understanding of Fixed LODs, but not so much of Table Calcs, check out the video below.  But before you do, I recommend checking out the video from Andy Kriebel on how to read Table Calcs in plain English as it will be crucial for this video.  

Lastly, if you are here just for the sake of reference, the key point is that you include the dimension in a Fixed LOD and for the same result, you uncheck it in the Table Calc.  Please watch the video (at the bottom of this blog post) for a full explanation.  You can follow along with the sample viz on Tableau Public.

 

Kevin Flerlage, June 28, 2021

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