The new Distribution plot

[ArturoMuñoz]

The Qlik Sense June 2017 release came with a bunch of new visualizations, distribution plot is one of the new objects available to drag and drop into Qlik Sense. Let’s use an example to check what a distribution chart can tell us that was previously hidden from our eyes.

I’m going to use a very simple example of sales data, it contains 3 sales rep and monthly sales that extends over a year. We want to see how our reps are preforming over the year by observing some execution indicators such as total sales and average sales.

In our not-so-random example data, sales are even for the sales team. As you can see in the picture below, their aggregated numbers are almost identical.

Average is just not enough to see how sales rep are performing, we need more granularity if we really want to understand how the sales process works. To do so we could try to include months and maybe use a different visualization object like a line chart.

Line chart will help us to see sales with a temporal component, I see how both Jerry and Sheri have a very regular sales process over the months while Dani's go all over the board with excellent months and not so great ones.

Distribution plot can help me to get a better picture of our sales by giving us a glance of data dispersion.

I see that despite having the same yearly sales amount and sales average the actual distribution over time is quite different from each other.

Jerry has tight sales performance month to month with all the points(months) falling in a compact cluster. Sheri meanwhile has a very tight bucket of dots a little over $150 but also a couple of months that could be considered as outliers. That is valuable information that wasn’t obvious only attending to the line chart.

Dani's sales don’t follow the pattern described by the other two individuals. For Dani, monthly sales range from $0 to $600 is either an excellent or a terrible month. Any company will be happier with a more consistent sales performance and our imaginary company is no exception to that. By learning how each one of the sales team performs we can take the necessary actions to help Dani to be more reliable.

As we have seen similar yearly sales and identical sales average could hide some valuable information, there’s a story in your data that needs to be discovered.

Enjoy it,

Arturo (@arturoqv)

[robert99]

Hi I surprised its not possible to color by dimension. I know I can hover over the dot but likewise with a bar chart

[sammie0808]

good point and it would be good if you could list the data points

On Sun, Jul 16, 2017 at 4:25 AM, Robert Hutchings <qcwebmaster@qlikview.com>

[guruprem]

Excellent Post. Only after reading this post I understand the use case of Distribution plot.

On Appearance, I believe Qlik has already noted the feedback and add the improvements in next release.

[Anders_Eriksson]

Same as with all other Sense visualizations.
You can only have control over the colors if you use it as a maser item.
The color control possible in QlikView is still missing in Sense.
Some visualization guru that thinks they now best what color your lines/dots/bars should be.

[kenphamvn]

Great chart, it's powerful

Waiting new release with "Color by Dimension" function on Qlik Sense

[shraddha_g]

Can we change color of points or size be changed on basis another Measure?

[james_butler]

Hi

Great post.

Have you been able to successfully use an exprerssion as reference line?

My distribution plot shows daily store balances over the past 90 days by store. Each dot represents a day:

I wanted to add a reference line which represents yesterday's stock balance but it doesn't work. The expression I've used for the reference line is:

=sum({$<

      Source = {'Stock-Store'},

      CCtrGrpA = {'Retail','Franchise'},

      [Store is EPOS Stock Enabled] = {'-1'},

      [Part Type] = {'F'},

      [Part Primary Supply] = {'150','170','195','299'},

      Year=,

      Week=,

      [Date] = {">$(=Max({$<[Day Complete] = {1}>} [Date])-1) <=$(=Max({$<[Day Complete] = {1}>} [Date]))"}

              >}          

[Stock Balance Total Standard Cost])

This expression works when used in other charts.

Any guidance would be much appreciated.

Thanks

James