Advanced Analysis – Box Plots (Step by Step Tutorial)

This article is part of the Advanced Analysis series of data visualization tutorials.

The tutorial will cover how to create a box and whisker plot in Tableau using real data on homes sold in Seattle, Redmond, and Bellevue between September 2014 and October 2014. 

Download the data

Download the .csv file "Home Sales - Bellevue, Redmond, Seattle.csv". The file is available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8ebWt6os-ryNlc4UTJnSm9GSUk/view

Connect to the data

Set up the data connection to the .csv file in Tableau.

Step 1

Open Tableau Desktop and connect to the data source by clicking Connect to Data.

Step 2

Under the In a File category, select Text File. Locate the Home Sales .csv file and select Open.

Step 3

On the data connection page, click Go to Worksheet.

Build the view

Now that you have your data source set up, begin building the view.

Step 1
From the Measures pane, drag Price to the Rows shelf.

Step 2
From the Dimensions pane, drag City to the Columns shelf.

The view looks like this.


Step 3
Drag PropertyID onto the Detail shelf in the Marks card. 

Step 4.1 (Optional)
On the view, right-click the Price axis, select Format...

Step 4.2
In the Format pane on the Axis tab, select the Numbers drop-down list and choose Currency (Standard).

Step 5
On the Marks card, in the Marks type drop-down list, select Circle.

Step 6 (Optional)

On the Marks card, select Size and re-size the circles to show greater distinction between properties.

Step 7.1

On the view, right-click the Price axis, select Add Reference Line, Band, or Box...

Step 7.2

In the pop-up window, select Box Plot. 

Step 7.3 (Optional)
In the Whiskers extend to drop-down list, select Maximum extend of the data. 

Step 7.4 (Optional)
In the Fill drop-down list, select Blue. Click OK. 

Step 8 (Optional)

To distinguish between cities easily, drag City from the Dimensions pane onto Color shelf in the Marks card.

Step 9
Remove the outlier in the Seattle data by hovering over the property sold at $7.7M in the view, and selecting Exclude to remove it from the view.

Step 10
Remove the outlier in the Seattle data by hovering over the property sold at $7.7M in the view, and selecting Exclude to remove it from the view.

Step 11
Add a quick filter to the view by right-clicking Sq. Ft. in the Measures pane and selecting Show Quick Filter. Repeat this step on other Measures and Dimensions for additional desired filters.

The final view should look similar to this.