A floating bar chart is similar to a Gantt chart, except it shows the range of two data points instead of two dates.

This week's data set only contained one measure, two years, and country names. This meant that I had to focus on charts that help visualize comparisons.

Tableau comes with some great color palettes that have been designed to work well together. And you can add your own custom color palettes by making a couple of simple changes to the preferences.tps file that comes with Tableau Desktop. For example, you may have a color palette that matches your company’s brand.

In this video I show you how to add 3 different types of color palettes to Tableau:

1. Categorical
2. Sequential
3. Diverging

This week's tip came about via a question from Bethany Fox of the Data School during our client project. I had previously posted a tip about how to create a diverging bar chart with two measures, but she wanted to create a diverging bar chart based on only one measure.

With a cheeky use of the INDEX table calculation, this was quite straightforward. In the video below, you'll see that the middle of the charts aren't lined up. I fixed this by using the INDEX calc again. You can download the workbook to see how I got it to work.

UPDATE: Some followers have let me know that they've heard these charts called tornado charts or butterfly charts. Basically, the consensus is that this type of chart doesn't have a name. That's ok though!

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For this week's tip, I show you how to make diverging bar chart or bikini charts or whatever they are called.