Innovative Tableau

Chapter 64. How to Display Varying Decimal Places

Tableau inspiration and problem solving can come from anywhere, and this tactic originated from a question from a Twitter connection! The user was trying to display four decimal places when the measure value on the view was less than one, but only two decimal places when the measure value was greater than one. This was a brainteaser because, by default, Tableau limits you to one number format per measure.

I loved the concept because I’m a big believer in maximizing the data-ink ratio, and the extra decimal places could be considered redundant data ink. My first instinct was to dynamically format the numbers with parameters, but this technique works only for controlling the prefix and suffix of each different number type. Instead, this chapter shows you two alternative approaches that allow you to control the prefix, suffix, and/or the number of decimal places when you are trying to display two (or even three!) number formats for the same measure in Tableau.

Note

Related: Practical Tableau, Chapter 65, “How to Dynamically Format Numbers” (O’Reilly, 2018)

Using Tableau’s ROUND and IIF Functions to Display Varying Decimal Places

If your only objective is to round decimal places based on a measure’s value, you can use Tableau’s ROUND and IIF functions in a calculated field.

To illustrate the dynamic formatting, I’ve ...