Force Nonexistent Values to Appear in Display Objects

How To... > Work with Collections > Control Behavior of Categorical Attributes Using Category Sets > Force Nonexistent Values to Appear in Display Objects

Sometimes a collection doesn’t have any cases that have a given value. For example, a few rolls of a die might not have each face represented. This may not matter, but sometimes it does, as when you want to determine the die’s fairness. By default, Fathom shows only existing values, but this behavior can be changed using a category set (see Attributes with Category Sets).

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1.	Show the collection inspector by selecting the collection or a case table and choosing Object \| Inspect Collection.

2.	Click the Categories tab to go to that panel.

3.	Click <new>, type a name for the category set, and press Enter or Return.

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4.	Click in the Categories cell for that set, and type the categories, in the order you want them to appear in graphs and such, separated by commas.

5.	Go to the Cases panel.

6.	Click Show Details. (If the button says Hide Details, then details are already showing; the button toggles between the two states.)

7.	Select the attribute to which you want to apply the category set, and choose the name of the set from the Set pop-up menu. (You can apply a set to more than one attribute at a time.)

The attribute now has the category set applied to it. When the attribute is dropped on an object, all the categories will appear (whether or not any cases have them), in the order determined in the category set definition you created. Values that do not match those categories (if there are any) will be colored pink in case tables and inspectors and will appear under an <invalid> category in other objects.