Visual types in Amazon QuickSight

Amazon QuickSight offers a range of visual types that you can use to display your data. Use the topics in this section to learn more about the capabilities of each visual type.

Measures and dimensions

We use the term measure to refer to numeric values that you use for measurement, comparison, and aggregation in visuals. A measure can be either a numeric field, like product cost, or a numeric aggregate on a field of any data type, like count of transaction IDs.

We use the term dimension or category to refer to text or date fields that can be items, like products, or attributes that are related to measures and can be used to partition them. Examples are sales date for sales figures or product manufacturer for customer satisfaction numbers. Amazon QuickSight automatically identifies a field as a measure or a dimension based on its data type.

Numeric fields can act as dimensions, for example ZIP codes and most ID numbers. It's helpful to give such fields a string data type during data preparation. This way, Amazon QuickSight understands that they are to be treated as dimensions and are not useful for performing mathematical calculations.

You can change whether a field is displayed as a dimension or measure on an analysis-by-analysis basis instead. For more information, see Fields as dimensions and measures.

Display limits

All visual types limit the number of data points they display, so that the visual elements (like lines, bars, or bubbles) are still easy to view and analyze. The visual selects the first n number of rows for display up to the limit for that visual type. The selection is either according to sort order, if one has been applied, or in default order otherwise.

The number of data points supported varies by visual type. To learn more about display limits for a particular visual type, see the topic for that type.

The visual title identifies the number of data points displayed if you have reached the display limit for that visual type. If you have a large dataset and want to avoid running into the visual display limit, use one or more filters to reduce the amount of data displayed. For more information about using filters with visuals, see Filtering data in Amazon QuickSight.

For dashboards and analyses, Amazon QuickSight supports the following:

You can also choose to limit how many data points you want to display in your visual, before they are added to the other category. This category contains the aggregated data for all the data beyond the cutoff limit for the visual type you are using—either the one you impose, or the one based on display limits. You can use the on-visual menu to choose whether to display the other category. The other category doesn't show on scatter plots, heat maps, maps, tables (tabular reports), or key performance indicators (KPIs). It also doesn't show on line charts when the x-axis is a date. Drilling down into the other category is not supported.

The following image shows the other category on a bar chart.

The following image shows the other category on a pivot table.

Hiding or displaying the other category

Use the following procedure to hide or display the "other" category.

Customizing the number of data points to display

You can choose the number of data points to display on the main axis of some visuals. After this number is displayed in the chart, any additional data points are included in the "other" category. For example, if you choose to include 10 data points out of 200, 10 display in the chart and 190 become part of the "other" category.

To find this setting, choose the v-shaped on-visual menu, then choose Format visual. You can use the following table to determine which field well contains the data point setting and what number of data points the visual type displays by default.