When I first started using #Tableau, I assumed that blue meant dimensions and green meant measures. They don’t.

Blue means Discrete
Green means Continuous

It took me a couple of years to get my head around this most foundational concept in Tableau.

Dimensions and measures are merely a way that Tableau organizes the data.

And if you only take away one thing from this video, this is it:

• Blue things GROUP your data
• Green things COUNT your data
• Dimensions SPLIT up the view
• Measures FILL the view

I've spent years teaching people what blue and green mean in Tableau and I keep coming up with new methods. In this video, I’ll explain the entire concept to you.

It was day 1 of Tableau training for DS9 at The Data School yesterday and we were practicing different sorting methods, including sorting by a discrete measure. I was then asked how we could sort positive values from highest to lowest followed by the negative values from lowest to highest. This helps emphasize the best and worst performers. The trick was doing this in a single chart.

Enjoy!