A closer look at Fields

A field, also known as a column, is a single piece of information from a record in a data set.

For example, if you were to collect data on how many times a week a commuter chose different modes of transportation, your data set could include:

Commuter name, Mode, and Days per week are all fields. Commuter name and Mode are qualitative fields, while Days per week is a quantitative field. 

The members of the Commuter name and Mode field are limited to relevant categories. You would not include apple as an option in Mode because it doesn't match the definition of the field. The Days per week uses a range of 1-7 rather than categorical members. If you wanted to collect data on modes that people did not use, your range might include 0, too. You would not include negative values in the Days per week range, since you can't measure a negative trip. If you were measuring temperatures or profit, however, you could have a range that included negative numbers.

In Tableau, quantitative fields are referred to as Measures, and qualitative fields are referred to as Dimensions.