Welcome everybody, to this weeks #sportsvizsunday round-up. Counting back, this is the 39th edition from 2022. I'm not entirely sure where that time has gone but very soon, we'll be working hard to be "Christmas ready" but with the added distraction of a football World Cup taking place shortly before. Following the recent downturn in England's fortunes, I'm not sure how I feel about their chances in the tournament. Could it be the greatest case of deceiving their opponents into a false sense of security or are they really as goal shy, lacking in confidence, direction, and cohesion as they are currently making out? Only time will tell but whatever happens, watching World Cup football with the heating on–well as high as spiraling energy prices will allow–will be an interesting experience.
The other topic I'd thought to briefly mention was the final match of the amazing career of Roger Federer. Yes, it was effectively an exhibition match, yes, it didn't have the intensity of epic matches from the past, and yes, ultimately Roger, together with his friend and rival Rafa Nadal lost, but it was amazing to see the grace and elegance of the great man one last time. The atmosphere was incredible and I doubt many Roger or indeed Tennis fans, in general, had dry eyes at the end. Thank you, Roger.
Right, onto to round up. It seems appropriate to mention a couple of vizzes related to the career of Roger Federer. First up, we've got a lovely summary of grand slam performance via LinkedIn and Tableau Public from Josh Mark. Josh uses a nice collection of symbols and images to show the highlights from Federer's grand slam career. What stands out for me is the period between 2003 and 2009 when Federer was at his peak. Nice work, Josh!
Ferran Morales, infographic artist at Spanish publication Infografista shared a flowing visual on LinkedIn dedicated to the big three of Tennis. There is much to explore and admire from Ferran's work looking at stunning careers of Federer, Nadal, and Novak Djokovic.
Turning attention to Ice Hockey now. If you need to check out when your favourite team is playing during the 2022-2023 season then look no further, Micah Blake McCurdy has you covered! Micah has plotted the entire schedule into an easy to lookup design. Bookmark this page, Ice Hockey fans!
Football of the American variety is next with this interesting comparison of Offensive and Defensive plays in the NFL from Owen Phillips. It's clear there is a standout team when it comes to both sides of Expected Points Added (EPA), I'll admit, I had to look it up! Chicago Bulls, at the top of the diamond, seem to maximising scoring situations and minimising opponents' attacking opportunities better than anyone else. Interesting choice to rotate the scatter plot 45 degrees as well. Great job, Owen!
To complete our collection of American sports, we have this design from the world of Major League Baseball from Kyle Jetter. Kyle takes on Week 36 of fantastic community initiative workout Wednesday (#WOW) to leverage table calculations in Tableau to create this home run race chart. The smart emphasis of colour to make one line stand out amongst a huge amount of additional context is nice together with the interactivity to explore and select different players. I was interested to see how fast Albert Pujois's career took off before slightly plateauing and being overtaken by others.
I'm not sure we've ever had a week without any soccer vizzes and we don't disappoint here either with this effort from The Tompkins Times kindly shared by Rob Rayburn. The design explores the premier league teams in an interesting way comparing the overall squad cost with the average cost of the starting eleven. Soccer really is a squad game nowadays and this demonstrates the amount of talent that regularly has to sit on the bench waiting for their chance to impress the manager.
As I scroll through my Twitter feed I never tire of seeing the latest designs that Sports Viz Sunday founding member James Smith creates. These two images, of Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher's seven Formula 1 world championship titles are simply stunning and would grace any wall.
The Tableau Public viz gallery is a fantastic source of inspiration and showcases the cream of the crop. It's great to see when sports vizzes make it into the gallery and on this occasion we have two incredible designs to share.
First up, is an incredible review of the 2021 Formula 1 season by Rafael Centeno Perez. An epic season from start to finish and this long form infographic is packed full of stunning visuals and statistics with great use of imagery and colour. A well deserved entry into the gallery, Rafael.
The second entry, from Masato Watanabe, covering the world of Basketball, looks specifically at the NBA finals between 1980 and 2020. It's clear to see from this the periods of dominance that teams went through and also those which had huge numbers of years in the wilderness before recapturing former glories.
That's it for this weeks round-up. Fantastic work once again and don't forget that #sportsvizsunday tag if you submit something that is sport related.
Reminder - We have a Commonwealth monthly challenge up and running if you wanted to check out the fantastic data set we have on that and coming soon, a new monthly challenge for October. Stay tuned for that!
Have a fantastic week everybody!
Simon and the Sports Viz Sunday team
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