What are Facts and Dimensions in Tableau?
Facts are the numerical measures you analyze, while dimensions are the categories you use to slice and filter those numbers.
Practical Response 1:
“Facts are the numbers I track, like sales or profit, and dimensions are how I break them down—by region, product category, or time period.”
Practical Response 2:
“In my Tableau work, I use dimensions to create rows and columns for organization, and facts as the values that populate the charts and calculations.”
Detailed Explanation:
In Tableau, dimensions are categorical fields that create headers and segments in your visualizations. They’re typically qualitative data like:
- Product names, customer segments, or geographic regions
- Date fields used for time-based analysis
- Text fields that describe characteristics or attributes
Facts (called “measures” in Tableau) are the quantitative values you analyze and aggregate. They represent:
- Numerical business metrics like revenue, quantity, or profit
- Calculated values such as ratios, percentages, or growth rates
- Continuous data that can be summed, averaged, or counted
The relationship is fundamental: dimensions answer “what, where, when” while facts answer “how much, how many.” When you drag a dimension to Rows or Columns, Tableau creates categories, and when you add a fact, it calculates values for each category. This interaction enables powerful analysis like comparing sales (fact) across different regions (dimension) or tracking profit (fact) over time (dimension).
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