In the mainstream Tableau visualization works, the pie chart appears less and less. The main reason is that the area of the pie chart can mislead readers’ feeling of the actual measurement value, and readers can’t understand the data through the radian displayed by the pie chart.
To reveal the relationship between parts and the whole, waffle chart is an ideal option. This tutorial will show you how to draft a waffle step by step.
Data preparation
Waffle chart is one of the few chart types that require two datasets. The first dataset is used to form the shape of waffle. Below is the structure of it.
Each column and row represent a single block in the chart. There are a total 100 blocks in the chart.
Build a waffle
Drag attribute ‘column’ to Columns and attribute ‘row’ to Rows, change the Mark to ‘Square’ then uncheck ‘Aggregate Measures’. Now you get a waffle chart without data, adjusting size to make it look nice.
Input actual data
The display logic of data in waffle chart is different from other charts, you do not need to add the data to the data sources. To be more specific, we need to manually create and edit a calculated field to display the data. For instance, suppose that our data is regarding gender distribution. According to the data, the percent of male is 30% and the percent of female 70%, below is the formula of calculated field and we can name it ‘color’.
After that, drag this field to Color. Your chart should looks like this:
In addition, in some cases your data may involve three or even more groups, the formula for multiple groups is like this:
If INDEX() <=XX then ‘Group 1’
ELSEIF INDEX()>XX and INDEX()<=XX then ‘Group 2’ ELSEIF….ELSEIF….
ELSE ‘Quick’ END