Tile and Multifield Binning

I still don't quite get the Tile and Multifield Binning tools.

So, I want to use the tile tool when I want to make continuous data discrete. Instead of 4'10",4'11", 5'2", 5'7", 6'3" and 6'1", I can have less than 5 feet, between 5 and 6 feet, and more than 6 feet "bins." Makes sense.

I dummied up some data to play around with the tools

I'm still not sure:

A. What does the equal sum configuration do?

B. What does the Group By configuration do? It just seems to order the data differently, doesn't seem to change the tiles?

C. I don't really understand the multifield binning tool at all. It seems way less customizeable than the tile tool. Is its only purpose for when you want to tile multiple fields, just so you don't have to use multiple tile tools?

tile and bin age - sex.yxmd

Preparation

Accepted answers

AkimasaKajitani

Hi @enwiegand (Thanks for mentioning Cloud avatar)

It is able to do by Manual Tile Method as @cgoodman3 said.

Don't forget to use Group by Option.

One thing I forgot to mention is that the Multi-Field binning tools is for numeric fields only.
You must always specify a numeric field.

This is clearly different from Tile tool.

tile and bin age - sex_AK.yxmd

All comments

AkimasaKajitani

Hi @enwiegand

A. What does the equal sum configuration do?

It is that sum of specified field equal at each group as possible.

result

B. What does the Group By configuration do? It just seems to order the data differently, doesn't seem to change the tiles?

Group by option is that Tiling execute at each group.

For example, if you set the Sex field to a "Group By" option, it is that tiling at each value F and M separately.

result

Yes as far as I am concerned.

Multi field binning tool is alteryx macro. So you can open it to analyze.

"Equal Records" option is using Tile tool.

”Equal Interval" option is another logic. But it is simple.

tile and bin age - sex_AK.yxmd

cgoodman

To answer specifically how you would get your height groups, you could just use a formula tool and the expression Left([height],1) or a text to columns and split on the ‘ delimiter then group your data by that field then you’ll have the bins/groupings you want?

enwiegand

@AkimasaKajitani Thank you (love the Cloud avatar btw!)

So what if I wanted to create different tiles based on groups? Let's say I want to create tiles based on age groups 0 - 18, 19 - 35, 36 - 55 etc, but separate by male and female. Is there a way to do that in the tile tool? Or do you need to use a filter tool to split the data then re-union it later in the workflow?

cgoodman

You can do that with the manual option in the tile tool:

The output will have a new field with the tile number, i.e. ages < 18 in tile 1. You can then update that with a text input tool and a join so you get 0-18 etc.

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