Tableau 10 Complete Reference

Area charts

Think of a line chart and then fill in the area beneath the line. If you have multiple lines, stack the filled areas on top of each other. That's how you might think of an area chart.

As an example, consider a visualization of delinquent loan balances being analyzed by the bank manager:

This area chart shows delinquent balances over time. Each band represents a different severity of delinquency. In many ways, the view is aesthetically pleasing, but it suffers from some of the same weaknesses as the stacked bar chart. Since all but the bottom band have different starting locations from month to month, it is difficult to compare ...