Explanation of the sample data used in this chapter

For this chapter, we’ll use a sample dataset of patient visits to the hospital. The data itself is contained in the Excel file Hospital Visits.xlsx in the Learning Tableau\Chapter 14 directory. In this example, each tab of the Excel file represent tables of data. The principles described here are directly applicable to relational database tables, multiple files, or tables in any data source. The relationship between those tables is illustrated here:

Figure 14.1: The four tabs of the Excel file illustrated as four tables with relationships

Excel does not explicitly define the relationships, but they are shown here as they might exist in a relational database using foreign key lookups. Here is a brief explanation of the tables and their relationships:

• Hospital Visit: This is the primary table that records the admission and diagnosis of a single patient on a single visit to the hospital. It contains attributes...