Auto-calculated data columns

This article describes how to consolidate existing data using auto-calculated data columns.
Related article: View data in tabular form.

Map Business Online comes with rich set of demographic data. Demographic data is often organized into predefined ranges. For example: population by age or households by income. What if you need to combine several ranges for your market analysis? For example your typical customers are 20 – 29 years old. But Map Business Online only offers population data for 20 – 24 and 25 – 29 ranges. Here are auto-calculated data columns come in to play. You can use these data columns to consolidate ranges data.

Another application of auto-calculated data is visualizing market penetration. With auto-calculated data columns you can simply divide number of customers you have in a ZIP code by total population of that ZIP code or population of certain age in that ZIP code.

Consolidate several demographics ranges into one as following:

1. Open Manage Map & Data dialog for desired map layer. Just move mouse cursor over that layer name in Map & Data window and click ‘gear’ button that will appear.

2. In the Manage Map & Data dialog click ‘Manage calculated data columns’ button.

3. ‘Manage calculated data columns’ dialog with list of auto-calculated data columns will appear. Click ‘Add data column’ button.

4. In ‘Add data column’ dialog enter new column name. Then select Demographic data and columns you want to consolidate.

5. Click right-arrow icon to add selected columns to calculated data formula. Click ‘Add data column’ button to add new column to map layer.

6. Now you can use this new data column in color-coding, labels, and Data window.

This example shows how to calculate market penetration:

1. Start by plotting your customer data on map. See Plot data from Microsoft® Excel for more information.

2. Open Manage Map & Data dialog for desired map layer. Just move mouse cursor over that layer name in Map & Data window and click ‘gear’ button that will appear.

3. In the Manage Map & Data dialog click ‘Manage calculated data columns’ button.

4. ‘Manage calculated data columns’ dialog with list of auto-calculated columns will appear. Click ‘Add data column’ button.

5. In ‘Add data column’ dialog enter new column name. Then select your customer data and add Count column to the formula box.

6. Select Demographic data and add Population column to the lower part of the formula box. Pick ‘Divide’ to divide customers Count by Population.
   
   Click ‘Add data column’ button to add new column to map layer.

7. Now you can use this new data column in color-coding, labels, and Data window.