Free Tableau Tutorial ā learn Tableau calculations in 12 days
Calculated fields, level of detail and the aggregation rules - topic by topic, with every calculation runnable right here in the page.
A free, hands-on Tableau course
Twelve short lessons on the Tableau calculation language. Every calculation runs in your browser against a real data source - edit it, break it, run it again. Nothing to install, no signup, no Tableau licence needed.
Start with Day 1.
The 12 days
Day 1 ā What Tableau is, and dimensions vs measures
One idea does most of the work in Tableau. Get it and the rest follows quickly.ā¦Day 2 ā How Tableau aggregates
Tableau never shows you a raw number. It always aggregates - and knowing which aggregation iā¦Day 3 ā Calculated fields - row by row
A calculation that runs once per row, before anything is added up.ā¦Day 4 ā IF, CASE and conditional logic
Making a calculation decide for itself - the basis of banding, flagging and grouping.ā¦Day 5 ā Text functions and cleaning data
Splitting codes, standardising labels and pulling apart the fields you were given.ā¦Day 6 ā Working with dates
Truncating, parting and comparing dates - and the difference that trips people up.ā¦Day 7 ā Level of Detail - the FIXED expression
The feature that separates people who use Tableau from people who know Tableau.ā¦Day 8 ā Ratios, KPIs and safe division
The measures a manager actually asks for, and the traps in each one.ā¦Day 9 ā Filters, groups, sets and parameters
Four ways to narrow down data, and the order Tableau applies them in.ā¦Day 10 ā Building a view that gets read
The calculations are right. Now make something a manager will actually look at.ā¦Day 11 ā Putting it together - a full analysis
One dataset, one question, and every technique from the first ten days.ā¦Day 12 ā 12 practice questions
Everything from the first eleven days. Write your own answer before opening each box.ā¦The data source
48 orders across 2024 and 2025, dimensions in blue and measures in green, exactly as Tableau colours them.
What this playground can and cannot do
Tableau Desktop is an application you drag things around in, and a web page cannot be that. But the calculation language is a language, so that is what this teaches and runs. The engine is written from scratch and evaluates real calculated fields against a real data source.
It supports row-level and aggregate calculations, SUM AVG MIN MAX COUNT COUNTD MEDIAN ATTR, IF/ELSEIF/ELSE/END, CASE/WHEN, AND/OR/NOT, the text functions (LEFT RIGHT MID LEN TRIM CONTAINS SPLIT REPLACE), the date functions (DATEPART DATENAME DATETRUNC DATEDIFF DATEADD), ZN and IFNULL, and FIXED level-of-detail expressions.
It enforces the rule that catches everybody: you cannot mix an aggregate with a row-level field. Write SUM([Sales]) + [Quantity] and it stops, exactly as Tableau does.
How to get the most out of it
- Type the calculation, do not copy it. The typing is where the learning happens.
- Watch the Grand Total row. When it is not the sum of the rows above, understand why before moving on.
- Break things deliberately. Remove an END, mix an aggregate with a bare field. The error messages teach you the rules.
- Do the exercises at the end of each day.