Tableau's Table calculations are an absolute must for anyone developing their Tableau skills. Whether using the pre build Quick Table Calculations to "plug and chug" some numbers, or customizing your own, this subset of Calculated fields is game changing when speeding up your dashboard building process.
What are Table Calculations?
Table calculations are a type of calculated field that is only applied to data in the view/currently in the visualization. This means they don't consider values or fields that aren't in your view.
Some of the most common uses include calculating rankings, percent of totals, or running totals for your visualizations.
How do they work?
Table calculations can exist within sections, or partitions of your data, depending on how it is presented or structured. You can calculate values across a specific row, down a particular column, within a pane, and more. Tableau has some great images that help you visualize these different breakdowns .
Table (Across) calculates a value for each row based on the values in that row for fields in your view.
Table (Down) calculates a output based on all the values in a column.
Table (Across then Down) calculates values in z pattern through the table.
Table (Down then Across)
If you want to calculate within a small subset of your data you can do calculations within the Pane.
Similar to table level these can be down (within the pane):
Or Pane (Across then Down)
or Pane (Down then Across)
Additionally, you can do cell level table calculations.
For deeper exploration and explanations see the full documentation on tableau's page: https://help.tableau.com/current/pro/desktop/en-us/calculations_tablecalculations.htm
Best of luck and happy vizzing!