#Tableau - Show Variance with Bar Charts

Using variance as a measure in bar charts helps you:

1. Add context - You can answer the question “compared to what?”
2. Make decisions - You can answer the question "what should we do next?"
3. Alert you to areas that need focus

In this video, I show you 10 ways to add variance to bar charts.

0:48 Variance to Prior Year Sales
2:14 Side by Side bar chart
3:15 Bar in Bar chart
4:32 Indicator for decrease in variance
6:07 Deviation/variance/difference between two measures
6:59 Year over year variance by month bar chart
7:36 Floating bar chart (Gantt bar chart)
8:17 Bullet graph
8:56 Sparkbars / spark bars / sparklines as bars
10:02 Population pyramid

Resources:

[quiafff]

Thanks tou so much! The way you have improved your videos is awesome! I really support your work, I am improving my skills because of you. Thank you for posting this.

[b_rizzle]

ive seen a lot of tableau videos by others and this video format is so much easier to follow along with and learn

[ibryam]

Thank you, Andy. That was very useful. Thank you once again for the HD.

[PatrickBateman]

Love the "new" video style, Andy! Your profound knowledge of Tableau shines much more than with text.

[jameschen]

the red dot indicator is my favourite! thanks for sharing

[juanalbertocarlotta]

I'm now a fan! You are really good at what you do.

I'll make sure to study your videos!

Cheers! And more success to your content.

[ImaLurkin]

I’m a newbie to tableau visual analytics world. This is awesome thank you!

[eddyjo]

Hi, I'd like to understand the calc at 1:02 It's basically Int(True) * [sales]
when broken down ---> 3, 379 * [sales]

How come we get the sales of that year ?

[rehtserdz]

Thanks Andy! I love the population pyramid. My only concern is that the female population now displays in negative form in the tooltip. Any suggestions regarding how to display it as positive?

[TravisTraps]

video production techniques is ramping up I see Andy!

[TH-vwqn]

Is there a quick way to add the variance to mark labels? Your video production has gotten much better!

[stoneage]

thanks for the tips Andy, i have a question about waterfall chart for variance, im not sure if its possible in you have 2021 YTD sales=100 on the left, 2022 YTD Sales=150 on the right, in between are the variance elements (lets say A, B, C, they are all separate calculations)， so from 2021 to 2022, that 50 variance is caused by A B C, so 2021 sales, A, B, C and finally 2022 sales, in total 5 measures. This is easy to plot in a table from left to right, but is it possible to show it as a waterfall in tableau ? funny thing is its quite easy to make in Excel

[OneOne-irky]

Hi Andy, I'm a new user of Tableau and have been watching your videos for the last couple of weeks - they are very educative and informative. Thanks a lot for all your work! I had a question though, I'm struggling to under why in the latest year's sales calc you are multiplying the max year by sales. Thanks

[wendyware]

Favorite choice for comparing 3 measures: Current year actuals vs. last year actuals and current year actuals vs. current year plan? There has to be something more slick than my current method of using 3 bars!

[gokulsutar]

Hello sir this vides is great to learn more but I have a question
category/sub-category into column and sales in row then Avg line should be pane wise and define as
below Avg it should be in Red color and above Avg it should be in Green color how we can achieved

[pazliduvinamejia]

This is one of the best tips compiled in one video. Thank you very much!

Is it possible for us to get a copy of the workbook? It says under resources but it doesn’t look like it is there.

[krupenderm]

Hi Andy.. Could pls make a video on how to bifurcate a quarter into 13 week dynamically

[PatrickBateman]

No wonder many Python Analysts pretend not to like Tableau: that's quite challenging to produce in Python 🙂