#635 Master Ravel for a Publication Tab?

[Steve Keen]

This idea developed in response to trying to emulate the dashboard in the attached very-well-designed Excel Pivot-Table file. I found that I couldn't. This might reflect my lack of depth with Ravel compared to you guys, but I think the issue is that, the Filters on the dashboard function like a "Master Ravel" in that settings in a filter determine the appearance of all tables/plots on the dashboard.

So, would it be feasible to emulate the underlying power by allowing a Ravel that is not attached to any specific data file to be designated as a "master Ravel" which controlled all Ravels on the relevant publication tab (or on the wiring tab, if that is a better way to go)?

The Master Ravel would inherit all the dimensions of the relevant Tab (either Publication or Wiring) but not have any data in it. Selections or operations on this Ravel would then affect all the Ravels on the Tab in the same way: selection, roll up, pick slices, callipers, etc.

Having thought about it a bit once confronting this problem, I think this could be quite a powerful feature in general. Of course there could only be one Master Ravel on any Tab.

[High Performance Coder]

Could you shed some light as to how the XL slicer is supposed to be used? In LibreOffice, I just get the following text:

This shape represents a slicer. Slicers are supported in Excel 2010 or later.

[Steve Keen]

Sure. I'll use it and take a video. The point is that the filters on an
Excel Tab, with plots derived from a set of independent Pivot Tables,
affects all of the plots. We can't (yet) do that, because Ravels are
currently related just to the slice already taken from the source data.

Best, Steve
Professor Steve Keen
Want to rebuild economics? Support me on
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ProfSteveKeen
https://www.patreon.com/ProfSteveKeen
My latest book, The New Economics, is now available from Polity:
http://politybooks.com/bookdetail/?isbn=9781509545285
@ProfSteveKeen
Mobile +66 (0) 99-257-2692

Honorary Professor, UCL &ISRS Distinguished Research Fellow
www.profstevekeen.com

On Thu, Sep 5, 2024 at 6:13 AM High Performance Coder hpcoder@users.sourceforge.net wrote:

Could you shed some light as to how the XL slicer is supposed to be used?
In LibreOffice, I just get the following text:

This shape represents a slicer. Slicers are supported in Excel 2010 or
later.

---

[ravel:#635] https://sourceforge.net/p/minsky/ravel/635/ Master Ravel
for a Publication Tab?

Status: open
Milestone: Babbage
Created: Tue Aug 27, 2024 07:08 AM UTC by Steve Keen
Last Updated: Tue Aug 27, 2024 07:08 AM UTC
Owner: nobody
Attachments:

• Coffee Shop Sales.xlsx
  https://sourceforge.net/p/minsky/ravel/635/attachment/Coffee%20Shop%20Sales.xlsx
  (19.4 MB; application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet)

This idea developed in response to trying to emulate the dashboard in the
attached very-well-designed Excel Pivot-Table file. I found that I
couldn't. This might reflect my lack of depth with Ravel compared to you
guys, but I think the issue is that, the Filters on the dashboard function
like a "Master Ravel" in that settings in a filter determine the appearance
of all tables/plots on the dashboard.

So, would it be feasible to emulate the underlying power by allowing a
Ravel that is not attached to any specific data file to be designated as a
"master Ravel" which controlled all Ravels on the relevant publication tab
(or on the wiring tab, if that is a better way to go)?

The Master Ravel would inherit all the dimensions of the relevant Tab
(either Publication or Wiring) but not have any data in it. Selections or
operations on this Ravel would then affect all the Ravels on the Tab in the
same way: selection, roll up, pick slices, callipers, etc.

Having thought about it a bit once confronting this problem, I think this
could be quite a powerful feature in general. Of course there could only be
one Master Ravel on any Tab.

---

Sent from sourceforge.net because you indicated interest in
https://sourceforge.net/p/minsky/ravel/635/

To unsubscribe from further messages, please visit
https://sourceforge.net/auth/subscriptions/

[High Performance Coder]

Albeit, I'm not quite sure what a "slicer" is in Excel, but given the name, I suspect this precisely emulates the dashboard example.

[High Performance Coder]

There is a "master ravel", as shown on the "Publication tab", and it slices the remaining two axes: "store location" and "product category"

[High Performance Coder]

Note - I imported month and day of week data as string dimensions. Fortunately, these were correctly sorted. In theory, it should be possible to import these as time dimensions, and therefore sort them, but I noticed that the boost time parser we use had some difficulties in parsing data without years attached.

[Steve Keen]

MasterRavelToEmulatePivotTableFilterFunctionality20240905A.mp4
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lH3G5ac9t2Zh-b-zVTjMaF2Jog0-QMfW/view?usp=drive_web
Yes, that seems to nail it. Here's a video of me using the slices feature
on that Excel file anyway. Pardon the excess commentary!

[High Performance Coder]

Or perhaps even better - what about this?
We should try to collect these as "worked examples" somewhere.