Table calculations are computations that are applied to the values in the entire table and are often dependent on the table structure itself. Table calculations are calculations that are performed on data that is already in your table or chart, so doing additional calculations on top of previous calculations. Table calculations work with data in the cache.

You can create three types of calculations: Basic (aggregated and non-aggregated) Level of Detail, and Table Calculations.

Tableau has a number of Quick Table Calculations. They are: Running Total, Difference, Percent Difference, Percent of Total, Rank, Percentile, Moving Average, YTD Total, Compound Growth Rate, Year Over Year Growth, YTD Growth.

Before getting into table calculations, you’ll want to understand calculated fields. A field is a column. Can you think of a case where you would use two existing columns to create a value in a new calculated column? How about Sales minus Expenses to give Profit. Or in an Order table we could multiply the Price of the Product by the Quantity Ordered to give the Total Cost of that item in the Order. The Profit Margin ratio is the Net Income / Net Sales. This may also be called Profit Ratio. To do these calculations, we work with one row at a time. The previous row and the next row are not relevant to the calculation.

After learning about table calculations you may have a look at Quick Table Calculations.