Being able to compare data across geographies is critical for any business. Imagine if an organization is doing business in multiple locations; the analysis of interest would be to find out which region is giving high sales, which region is profitable, which region has the maximum customer base, and so on.
Our data may consist of geographic fields such as countries, states, cities, and so on, and when we are analyzing these fields, it makes sense to plot them on a map, primarily because it is easier to compare information across regions to find various geographic trends.
Tableau has many data-map providers and it comes with a set of Online and Offline maps that one can access to create the maps views. Further more, Tableau understands various geographic roles as well, and once it does that, it will create a small globe icon as a prefix for that field. Refer to the following image:
Tableau will also auto generate two measures: Latitude (generated) and Longitude (generated). We...
