During our first couple of days as DS-ers we have been covering Tableau Fundamentals. For my first actual Tableau based blog post I am keeping it super simple with continuous vs discrete dates. The data I have given as an example shows sum of sales by quarter for each year.

Discrete

• There are two date fields in columns required to narrow down the sales by quarter per year- both are in blue meaning it is discrete
• Discrete data generates rows and columns (see bottom left corner, 1 row and 16 columns)
• The years are separated by a columns

Continuous

• There is only one date field required columns to show each quarter per year- this time it is green indicating that it is continuous
• Continuous measures create axes (see bottom left corner, 1 row and 1 column)
• The years are not split by columns, instead there is one continuous line joining each year to the next

A very simple overview into discrete vs continuous data!