Using range filters

The range filter lets you filter to a range of values using a slider.

About this task

Note: Some of the functionality described here can only be authored or accessed using the installed Spotfire client.

You can filter out values at both ends of the range, meaning that only rows with values within the chosen range remain in the visualization. Labels above the slider state the exact range.

Note: A shade at either end of the slider indicates that currently there is no data visible in that part of the range because other filters in the analysis have filtered out those rows.
Range filter with values filtered using other filters

Range filter with values filtered using other filters

Double-click on the colored part to adjust the filter to only show the effective range.

An important feature of the range filter is that the values are distributed on a linear scale according to the values of the data. Thus, if values are unevenly distributed, this will be reflected in the range filter. Note that this is not the case with item filters, where values are distributed at even intervals along the range of the slider, regardless of the actual numeric values.

Procedure

Drag the left and right slider handles to change the lower and upper limits of the range, or use the keyboard to adjust the range when the filter is active. The left and right arrow keys will move the lower limit, and up and down arrow keys will move the upper limit.

If the range slider shows dates you can also click on the calendar icon to set start and end dates.
Alternatively, double-click on a label, type the wanted value, and press Enter.

The labels show the lower and upper value of the range.

Moving the selected range sideways

The currently selected interval of the range filter can be grabbed and moved to pan the selected range - this provides a powerful way of sweeping over different "slices" of a data table. Click and drag the blue portion of the modified range slider to do this. Observing the reactions of the other sliders to such a sweep can give some interesting clues to correlation between parameters in the data table.

Changing the filter range scale to a log scale

If the values of a column are unevenly distributed, you might want to change the scale used on the range slider to get better granularity when moving the slider handles. A column with many low values but only a few high values can benefit from using a Log10 scale. The scale setting does not alter the data in any way, just how the values are distributed along the slider.

Using the installed client, right-click on the range filter and select Filtering Scheme Properties.

In the Filtering Scheme Properties dialog, under Filter settings, select the Scale Log10.

In the example below, the range filter represents a column with many low values but only a few high values.

The first image below shows the filter with Original scale - the middle of the slider represents the value 250:

The image below shows the filter when the scale has been changed to Log10 Scale - the middle of the slider represents the value 26. It is now easy to set the left handle to specific low values:

Note: Resetting a range filter by selecting Reset Filter from the right-click menu only affects the range of values in the filter. This means that if the scale has been set to Log10, it will not be changed back to Original.

Filtering the data range

Sometimes, you might wish to filter the data in a column using a smaller range than the full range of the column. If so, you can define a range filter which only allows filtering in a smaller range.

Using the installed client, note that the original range filter span is 1 to 500.
Move the drag box to narrow down the selection.
Right-click on the range filter and select Filtering Scheme Properties from the pop-up menu.
Under Filter settings, set the Data range to Specific.
Click Range from Filtered.

The range filter expands to its full width, but with the range 296 to 500. Three dots are shown in the filter to indicate that the range is not the original full range.

Tip: You can also set the data range in the Filtering Scheme Properties dialog without filtering out any data beforehand. Set the Data range to Specific and enter Min and Max values in the provided fields.