Handling data
Your data is the most important thing when you are working with Spotfire. If you are familiar with the data you want to analyze, chances increase that you can set up good visualizations and find interesting conclusions during the analysis.
In some cases, there are things you can do to prepare your data for analysis before you view it in Spotfire, for example, see
Data preparation in Microsoft Excel. There are also a number of things you can do to get to know your data, and fix some issues before the analysis starts.
- Data panel
The Data panel provides a structured list of all loaded data columns. Using the panel, you can, for instance, with drag and drop specify which data columns to use on the axes of the visualizations, or you can filter to certain values, because each column in the panel is associated with a filter. - Getting an overview of your data
If you want to get more information about the data tables and columns in your analysis you can expand the Data panel to get an overview of the data or see details about a certain column. Here, you can also perform some data preparation and cleansing which can help getting visualizations the way you want them. - Changing the default sort order of values in a column
Text-based columns (strings) can be sorted differently depending on whether you want digits in the texts to be treated as numbers or to be sorted strictly alphabetically. You may also want to define a custom sort order, if the strings in the column have a hierarchical structure that is not alphabetical. - Unpivoting columns
Data can be organized in different ways, for example, in a short/wide or tall/skinny format, but still contain the same information. Often, it is easier to visualize data organized in a tall/skinny format, that is, when the values are collected in just a few value columns. Unpivoting is one way to transform data from a short/wide to a tall/skinny format, so the data can be presented the way you want it in the visualizations. - Replacing a value
If you find that a value in your data table is misspelled, or, if one value has been entered on a different form than the other values in the column, you can replace that value directly from a table visualization, from the Details-on-Demand, or, from the data table view of the expanded Data panel.
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