Sliders

Fathom Overview > Sliders

Sliders provide parameters or named numbers, in a document. You can refer to a slider value by name in any formula in a document. The beauty of referring to a number by name is that when you decide to ask what would happen if the number were different, you need only type in a new value or drag the slider’s “thumb,” and you can instantly and dynamically see the effect of the change on everything in the document that depends on it.

Sliders are commonly used as parameters to models, for example, the coefficient of a term in an equation being fit to a set of data or the rate at which customers arrive in a queuing simulation.

Sliders have their own inspector that gives you control over quite a number of properties. Especially powerful is the ability to compute the slider’s value with a formula. Unlike other formulas in Fathom, slider formulas can refer to the slider itself, so that each time the formula recomputes (for example, when the slider animates), the value changes based on the previous value. By dropping the name of a collection on a slider, you can even compute things based on the attributes and measures in the collection.

See Work with Dynamic Parameters (Sliders) and Slider Properties Panel.