In this week's Watch Me Viz, I showed the problem this tip helps solve. An area chart in Tableau only allows a single color. Like this…

What we want is an area chart like this with two colors. 

In 9 simple steps, I’ll show you how to build it. Follow along with the video. The 9 steps are listed at the bottom of this post.

STEPS

1. Create the area chart

2. Show what happens when you add a profit to color - you only get one color

3. Duplicate the measure

4. Fix the axes

    1. Top axis starts at 0

    2. Bottom axis ends at 0

5. Choose a color for each area chart

6. Format the axes to get rid of 0

7. Add reference lines to scale the charts relative to each other

    1. WINDOW_MAX(ABS(SUM([Profit])))

8. Duplicate for the negative reference line

9. Formatting

Context is important in data visualization. For every chart you create, consider asking yourself "compared to what?" 

In this tip, I show you how to add context to a simple bar chart by showing whether a value is above or below the average.

This week’s tip shows you how to perfectly positive KPIs next to bars irrespective of the dimensions in the view. This started as a Data School Gym Challenge if you’d like to have a go at it before you watch the video.