Race Bar Charts

Today, I am sharing with you the steps to create a Race bar chart. Race bar charts are the best option to show how a metric has changed over time across multiple places.

The scenario I am considering today for this post is the population across different countries across the time-period of 1966-2018. Let's see how to visualize how some countries have become more and more populous over time.

The data set I am using is the world population. You can download it from here.

Let's see the steps to create the race bar chart.

1. Import the data in Tableau.

2. Drag population in columns and countries in the color mark.

3. Create a Rank calculated field: RANK_UNIQUE(Sum(Population))

4. Convert the calculated field to discrete and drag it on to rows. Right click on the Rank calculated field and compute it using country.

5. Place the year field on the pages shelf. The final bar chart with a control to navigate the years would be as below:

You can click on the play button to see the race bar in actions and see how countries have become populous with the advance in years.