Visual Analytics: Create a new filter from selected data
Are you using Visual Analytics for data analysis or looking for anomalies? If so, then let me show you one of the easiest ways to get a subset of data fast! If not, this is still a nice feature to learn so that you can dive into your data to answer business questions.
New filter from selection
Most objects in Visual Analytics allow you to right-click on a data point and then use the menu to select New filter from selection and then you can choose to Include only selection or Exclude selection.
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This will automatically create and apply an object level filter. To undo the applied filter, use the Undo button at the top right.
And while this may be what you need, it is more likely you will want to include more than one data point. You can select multiple data points by holding the Shift key and either single clicking on data points or you can lasso data points. You can even combine methods by holding the Shift key then single click and lasso!
Next, right-click on one of the selected data points and proceed with selecting New filter from selection and then, in this example, click Include only selection.
The filter is automatically applied to the object. You can use the Maximize button to view the summary data that makes up the object. Use the Restore button to return to the default object view.
New filter then Duplicate as a different object type
Let’s combine a few more quick click features. This next example uses the dot plot object. In this example, I lasso some data points and choose an Include only selection
Then I duplicate the object as a list table and add an additional column for analysis. Notice that when I duplicate the object, the same filter is applied to the objects.
Now we can analyze the Product Makes with the highest Order Totals and by adding in the data item Vendor Type we can see which type is contributing to the most orders. This can be helpful to identify trends and we can make decisions to continue to supply certain vendor types or make changes.
Bar chart
Here’s an example using a bar chart object. In this case, I selected all of the Product Makes greater than one million dollars and Exclude selection.
Now I can investigate the under performing Product Makes. I right-click on the filtered bar chart and select Duplicate as then click Treemap.
Then, from the Data Roles pane I add the data item Order Marketing Cost (Avg) to the Color role. This is allowing me to explore the under performing Product Makes and see where we are spending, on average, the highest marketing costs.
List table
Similarly, you can take these same steps using the list table object. In this example, the only change is in order to multi-select non-consecutive rows, use the Ctrl button instead of Shift.
Here I selected the Product Line with the highest and lowest Order Totals. In a duplicated list table I added the Order Marketing Cost (Avg) data item and it’s easy to see the difference. If the same amount of marketing cost is applied to all Product Lines equally, could there be an increase in Order Totals?
Conclusion
Not all objects will have the option to create a New filter from selection but most will have this feature and we can see how fast this allows us to create a filter, duplicate the object with the same filter and then add additional data items or change the object type for further analysis.
I don’t cover it here, but you can always copy a filter or make it a common filter to easily reuse with the same data source on other objects in the report! Check out the Using common filters in SAS Visual Analytics article or YouTube.
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