From the course: Complete Guide to Tableau for Data Scientists

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How and why to add a running total to a line chart

How and why to add a running total to a line chart - Tableau Tutorial

From the course: Complete Guide to Tableau for Data Scientists

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How and why to add a running total to a line chart

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- [Instructor] The Running Total is a good way to show how data accumulates over time. Typically, we use it on a time series line chart to see how day on day, month on month, year on year, our overall values are increasing, but there's another good use case for the Running Total. To explain it, first, we'll create a continuous timeline chart looking at Sales. So first, I'm going to put Sales onto my row, and we'll right-click Order Date to put it onto our column, and we'll select the month of sales. Now, what this shows is the sales that are happening each month within our business. Now, we know we have seasonal variation. We know that towards the end of the year, our sales increase, over the summer, they decrease, and then pick up again in the autumn. Now, we understand that business. We understand that that's perfectly acceptable and we've mitigated that within our business structure. But to somebody else, what they are seeing is peaks and troughs. They're seeing good sales and bad…

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