Trust us, transpose is essential. When working on data analytics and reporting development, anything that makes the processing and organization of data easier is always welcome. There are plenty of scenarios in which data is not correctly organized, and any “hack” to collect that data to make it easier to visualize is welcome. Transposing data is one way to make data a little bit easier to work with.
In this guide, we’ll define transposing, provide some examples and use cases, and explain why it is so helpful for data analytics.
What is a Pivot Table
Most developers users know their way around a pivot table, but for those in the dark: A pivot table is a type of table that groups values that group the discrete components in a larger table (from a database, spreadsheet, business intelligence application, etc.) into one or more discrete categories. This summary may contain sums, averages, or other data that the pivot table aggregates using an aggregation function of choice that is applied to the grouped information.
What is the Process of Transposing Data?
No matter whatever tool you use to work with your data, transposing data is a pretty standard operation—transposing means moving something from one location to another. Transposing data involves moving data from a row to a column and from a column to a row. Data analysis benefits from transposition.
For analysis and report preparation, we may need to extract data from various files in various formats. In these situations, we may need to transpose some data from one file to another.
To put it simply: Transposing is just the process of changing columns to rows. And it can be pretty handy for analytics.
Why is Transposing Data Important for Analytics?
Transposing data generates a new file with the original data file's rows and columns reversed, turning cases (or rows) into variables and variables (or columns) into cases. Transposing data generates new variable names and provides a list of them. This can be extremely useful if you have a large amount of data that needs to be appropriately formatted for reporting and analytics.
Organizing your data for reporting and visualization more effectively may be accomplished by understanding how to transpose rows and columns. You may reorganize your data by transposing it rather than manually copying and pasting data from a row into a column.
When you want to present your data charts or graphs differently, you may occasionally want to transpose your rows and columns. In other cases, you can input data into your cells erroneously and like a quick way to change the data in your columns and rows. Data analysis may greatly benefit from the simple act of transposing your data.
Datasets should ideally be organized so that each row represents a single topic or object and each column represents a single variable.
However, depending on what is practical or affordable for the data collector, data can be captured or gathered in various ways. Additionally, you might require a specific format for your data to apply a particular analysis or technique. This is where a dataset can be transposed or reshaped.
Examples of When to Use Transpose
Transposing data is a good idea if you have a spreadsheet with columns of data that you need to rotate to arrange in rows. Using the transpose function, you may rapidly change data from columns to rows or vice versa.
Let’s consider an example of when transposing data is helpful in the context of data analytics. Consider the case where you have a data table with data analytics of sales by geographical area and per quarter for an international organization. The first column of information lists each sales quarter, while the following columns are arranged by nation.
The organization's overall profits are divided into each row by nation and quarter. The Transpose feature will reorder the table such that the Sales Regions are seen on the left and the Quarters are displayed in the column headers.
So why exactly is this useful? In the table’s original form, it may be challenging to visualize which countries are doing the best financially for the organization since rows organize them. Switching up the data format using transpose makes it easier to imagine which countries are pulling in the most revenue by listing each country vertically.
Use Cases for Transpose
Sometimes, you might want to organize rows in a spreadsheet that contains data in columns. You may quickly rotate the data using the Transpose tool instead of inputting it again. Without inputting new data, you may turn data from columns to rows and vice versa using the transpose feature.
The use cases are virtually endless for transposing data. If you are analyzing data for an organization’s tax preparation, you might have a table with a column that lists each tax return item in rows and additional columns that list each expense or cost per tax year.
For the sake of examining how the organization has grown or scaled over several years, the format of this table might not be ideal for generating a report that is easy to read for stakeholders.
By transposing that data, you can scan each tax year in descending rows and see how salaries and wages have increased or decreased. This can be done without completely recreating the report by hand or entering any new data.
If you have poorly organized data or could benefit from a change of format to visualize or report data, then using the transpose function can be extremely useful. Having to reenter or reformat data by hand can be tedious and take up quite a bit of time. The transpose function can be quite the lifesaver for data analytics and reporting for any data (industry, app, or process in general).
DashboardFox and Transpose: How Can We Help?
Utilizing transpose is essential for the successful execution of tasks that can assist businesses in their daily activities and operations. This helpful tool enables more efficient presentations and data processing, making it a critical factor for company growth.
DashboardFox does not have transpose yet in its available commands, but don’t worry! Our road map can help you check if we have added it to our ever-expanding list of commands to help you execute your much-needed processes for your company’s daily operations.
DashboardFox is a tool that is driven by customer feedback. If customers need a feature they don't currently have, they can let DashboardFox know, and the quality will be moved to the top of the roadmap. The feature will usually be added in a matter of days or weeks.
Take the first step towards long-term change by setting a meeting with us or trying out DashboardFox for free through our live demo session. We will wait for you!