Tableau Partitions and Dimensions illustrated

Tableau Partitions and Dimensions Illustrated

A very basic set of drawings that show how dimensions values partition up your data. I find this a useful diagram to show periodically to new students of Tableau. The concept is something you get used to fairly quickly if you use Tableau a lot, but sometimes your Excel-trained brain needs to be reminded that those single numbers that appear in each cell of a table are aggregations of multiple records.

In fact, Tableau really tries to aggregate almost everything you can look at* which can be disorienting at first. 

I find this diagram reinforces the importance of dimension values at slicing up your data. The dimension values slicing your data into partitions is actually the fundamental place to start. Anything you see is Tableau's effort to aggregate whatever collection of records is in each particular combination of dimension values. There could be 1 record, multiple records, or even no records. This is weird at first. 

*(unless you have turned off aggregation altogether which is used for certain types of graphs, not on a data table view)