The total row in a Power BI table: Is it wrong?

The total row in a Power BI table: Is it wrong? Let me tell you about the complexity of DAX, misleading terms like aggregators and iterators, and context transition…

Forget about DAX and Power BI. Think about business context and purpose, statistical meaning, and logic.

The total (if you used to think of it as the SUM of all rows) of MAX, MIN, and AVERAGE rarely makes any sense.

The tallest man is 270 cm; the tallest woman is 260 cm. The total (sum) is 530 cm. This makes sense only if you find those two people and one of them stands on the other’s head.

The tallest man is 270 cm; the tallest woman is 260 cm. The tallest human is 270 cm.

The “Total” label may be misleading, and some people will think of it as the sum of all rows no matter what column name says. To solve this problem, instead of fixing what is not wrong (Power BI, DAX, the value you see in the “total” row) and getting a really wrong result, just change the label to something unambiguous.