Row-level calculations and hiding and removing fields

Creating calculations in our data model can be of great benefit to analysts, who will use it to get answers to questions they have about the data. It makes more sense for some calculations to happen during analysis. These types of calculations relate to use cases where the data modeler can’t predict the questions the analysts will have. Typical examples are running totals, differences between values, period-to-date, and percentage of totals. These calculations are hard to perform ahead of the analysis phase because we don’t know the filters and the level of aggregation the analyst will be using ahead of time. These aggregate calculations are usually best left to the analyst and not put in the data model. However, there are some exceptions to this rule, so we will be looking at aggregate calculations in Tableau Prep Builder in Chapter 4.

Many other calculations only need to be performed once. These calculations tend...