Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Data visualization in sports

I'm of the camp that says data visualization is one of those "skills" that j-school grads are going to have to be familiar with. (Remember, familiar does NOT mean everyone must be an expert, but that you have to know about it to communicate with those who can help you pull it off.)

Here's an interesting data viz from the Syracuse-Morgan State game.

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2 Comments:

At 12/27/10, 9:13 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

The idea of the charts on the SU game was fascinating, but I thought the result was too hard to follow. The scale on the line chart didn't identify its units, for example. I want to figure out how they did it, though; there might be a really cool application lurking in the idea (Imagine the headlines: "Statistics say Cleveland State girls better bet than Browns"; "Need to watch playoff? Try orchestra."

 
At 12/28/10, 10:04 AM, Blogger Doug said...

Peter:

I had a little bit of trouble at first, too. But the more I looked at it, the more it made sense.

In this case, I was willing to give it a little more leeway because the site is aimed as sports fanatics, and I can see where they would focus on it and pick it up as a shorthand more easily than the general user.

I also think it is useful to show how a game can be broken into data parts that can be used by a computer to write the story.

Doug

 

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