Today we spent the day learning all things tableau and one important topic we came across was sets. A set is a subset of data which is based on the same conditions.
There are three types of sets: conditional sets, computed sets, and combined sets. Conditional sets are fixed, which means that the members of the set do not change. There are three types of computed sets: top, general and condition. Unlike conditional sets, computed set is dynamic and will change as the underlying data changes. Finally, we have combination sets which (as the name suggests) are a combination of two different sets. They can only be used when the sets are created using the same dimension.
There are various types of combinations we can do which can be represented on a venn diagram. You can combine all members, all shared members or only members from one set.
By creating sets, we can find the top or bottom 10 of multiple categories. This can be done by creating two separate sets and then combining them. We can also group together data below or above a certain value and apply it to graphs to view them in a different colour. The possibilities are endless.
By learning about sets I am now able to effectively group data together. During my application my lack of knowledge meant I was manually grouping data which took a lot of time and had a high risk of human error. If I was to add more data to my data set, it would not have automatically updated.