Creating a Marimekko Chart in Tableau

To close off there year, he is a quick and simple tutorial on creating a Marimekko Chart in Tableau. No data densification or any such data tricks. Just a few Table Calculations.

Note: This is an alternative type of data visualisation, and sometimes pushed for by clients. Please always look at best practices for data visualisations before deploying this into production.

Data

We will start by loading the Sample Superstore data into Tableau.

Note: If you have access to Tableau Desktop and the Sample Superstore data source, please use that instead.

Calculated Fields

With our data set loaded into Tableau, we are going to create the following Calculated Fields:

TC_Sales

WINDOW_SUM(SUM([Sales]))

TC_Total Sales

WINDOW_SUM(SUM([Sales]))

TC_Percentage of Total

[TC_Sales]/[TC_Total Sales]

TC_Percentage of Region

[TC_Sales]/[TC_Total Sales]

TC_Starting Point

RUNNING_SUM([TC_Total Sales])-[TC_Total Sales]

With this done, let us start creating our data visualisation.

Worksheet

We will now build our first worksheet:

• Change the Mark Type to Bar.
• Drag Segment onto the Colour Mark.
• Drag Region onto the Detail Mark.
• Drag TC_Starting Point onto the Columns Shelf.
• Drag TC_Percentage of Region onto the Rows Shelf.

You should see the following:

We will now edit our Table Calculations.

• Right-click on TC_Starting Point.
  • In Nested Calculations select TC_Total Sales.
    • In Compute Using select Specific Dimensions. Ensure that Segment and Region are selected and that Segment is on top.
    • In At the level select Segment.
  • In Nested Calculations select TC_Starting Point.
    • In Compute Using select Specific Dimensions. Ensure that only Region is selected.
• Right-click on TC_Percentage of Region.
  • In Nested Calculations select TC_Sales
    • In Compute Using select Cell
  • In Nested Calculations select TC_Total Sales.
    • In Compute Using select Specific Dimensions. Ensure that only Segment is selected.

You want to have the following:

We are getting closer and now will adjust the width of our bar charts. Drag TC_Total Sales onto the Size Mark and you should now see the following:

Now we will adjust our cosmetics::

• Drag TC_Percentage of Region onto the Tooltip Mark and adjust. the Table Calculation.
  • In Nested Calculations select TC Sales, and in Compute Using select Cell.
  • In Nested Calculations select TC_Total Sales, and in Compute Using select Specific Dimensions, select Region and Segment and ensure that Region is on top.
• Edit the Axis Header text.
• Add formatting.

And we will finally have our Marimekko Chart.

and boom, we are done! I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, and as always, you can find this data visualisation on Tableau Public at https://public.tableau.com/profile/toan.hoang#!/vizhome/MarimekkoCharts/MarimekkoCharts

Summary

I hope you all enjoyed this article as much as I enjoyed writing it and as always do share the love. Do let me know if you experienced any issues recreating this Visualisation, and as always, please leave a comment below or reach out to me on Twitter @Tableau_Magic. Do also remember to tag me in your work if you use this tutorial.

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Also, do be sure to check out our various courses:

• Creating Bespoke Data Visualizations (Udemy)
• Introduction to Tableau (Online Instructor-Led)
• Advanced Calculations (Online Instructor-Led)
• Creating Bespoke Data Visualizations (Online Instructor-Led)