Hi Andee,
Regarding the formula workaround, I just thought of a simplification:
(caseIndex+10)+”_”+State
The goal is that the computed value sort alphabetically to the same order as the states appear in the table.
caseIndex is the row number in the table. By adding 10, we avoid the complication that alphameric sorting places “10_” before “2_”. So once the states are sorted in decreasing order of Lyme disease incidence, the values computed by the formula will also sort in that order and that will be the default order in which they appear on a categorical axis.
Confusing? You bet! 🙂