Happy Sunday!
I'm Mo, another of the new members to the #SportsVizSunday team, and it's lovely to meet you all. It's a proper joy to be able to contribute to this blog and to share the wonderful visualisations that you all create. I learn a lot from them each week and they constantly inspire me too.
You've all been in fine form this week and there are many wonderful vizzes to share. I'm going to start with a trio of visualisations about the 2021 Formula 1 World Championship which finished last weekend (in theory at least...).
First up, Preethi L created this absolute belter of a visualisation. There is so much to see in this viz! Preethi has covered everything from the fastest pit stops to the cumulative points total for each driver through the season and lots more in-between! The amount of information could have been overwhelming, but Preethi has chosen really clear graph styles which increases the impact of their visualisation and makes it easy to absorb the information in each section. I'm also a fan of how Preethi has tied everything together through use of team colours.
The second F1 viz is from Mateusz Karmalski and is another scorcher. Mateusz's viz allows you to really drill down into how each driver has performed. Again, there is lots of great data to keep you busy exploring. The qualifying and race position bar graphs, and the Gantt showing which races ended with which points being awarded, are particular highlights for me. Mateusz has also used team colours throughout to keep everything together.
The third of the F1 vizzes is from someone not unknown to the #SportsVizSunday community. James Smith also focussed on this year's F1 races with an imaginative graph that shows the number of finishes at each place by each driver. I particularly like that you can see how the first and second drivers compare for each team, as this can be an interesting subplot for each F1 season. It also shows just how dominant Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen have been this season.
Moving away from F1, this NFL viz from Brett2point0 shows the how the Patriots and Steelers defences have moved in opposite directions since Halloween. I really like how the animation allows you to see the change in real-time (and that Brett has highlighted the two teams to focus on too). I wonder if this change is down to anything in particular?
Neil Richards often creates visualisations that are works of art, and his viz on the 2021 FIDE World Chess Championship is no different. Using clever inspiration from an album cover, this viz shows each move made by Carlsen & Nepomniachtchi, and whether it helped or hindered their cause. Neil's viz makes it so easy to see the ebb and flow of each match and how a single move can start a snowball rolling down the hill to eventual victory.
In the NBA, Steph Curry blew through the NBA's 3 point record this week, and Jeff Plattner's visualisation shows us just how much of a record-breaker Curry is! What I particularly like in this viz is that Jeff has used Curry as the case study of how analytics is changing play styles in the NBA overall too. It's really interesting to see how one player can reflect wider changes in a whole sport.
Sticking with Steph Curry, Todd Whitehead has created a physical visualisation of where Steph Curry's 3-pointers have come from on the court. I think there is always something a bit special about visualisations created in real life, and this is no exception. Glorious!
In the world of cricket, this week saw the start of the second test of The Ashes; a biennial competition between England and Australia. DataVizMich created a pair of attractive heatmaps showing the top run scorers for both sides, and the disproportionate amount of runs scored for England by their captain Joe Root.
Priya Yogendra Rana created an interesting viz on the top 15 richest cricketers in the world. They chose to highlight how career length doesn't necessarily correlate with net worth. I'm always fascinated by the economics and earnings in sport, and Priya's viz contains a wealth of supporting information about each cricketer's brand endorsements and business ventures (pun intended).
It's also been a busy week at #SportsVizSunday towers. Our very own Kate Brown looked at the 2021 Women's Amateur Massachusetts Golf Tournament. I love the way Kate explains and analyses each chapter of Catie Schernecker's victory using the story layout (one of the most underrated features of Tableau in my opinion). What a great victory for Catie!
Another name from our own parish, Simon Beaumont, created this playful take on which Premier League football teams provided the most Christmas cheer for their fans, by looking at the number of wins from each team's Boxing Day fixtures. It's a very clever use of a Voronoi chart, and I like the little extra detailing of the win/loss/draw icons in the tooltip.
Last but not least is a cheeky little visualisation from me. For our December challenge (viz your favourite sporting moment from 2021 - still time to submit an entry!), I chose Great Britain's Wheelchair Rugby gold medal in the 2021 Tokyo Paralympics. This is the first time that any European nation has won a Paralympic medal in Wheelchair Rugby!
Not quite a viz exactly but if you're a football/soccer fan then CJ's blog post about using StatsBomb's deep and free data set is for you. CJ shows you step-by-step how to use Python to connect to StatsBomb's data get it into a format ready to be vizzed. The level of detail available in their data is remarkable.
Finally, I'm sad to say that Spencer Baucke - one of the founding members of #SportsVizSunday - has decided to retire and take his formidable skills off the pitch and upstairs into the office.
Spencer has written a very interesting blog about his journey with #SportsVizSunday and I'd recommend giving it a read. I always take a lot from hearing about other journeys within the dataviz community. Spencer will definitely be missed (although fingers crossed he might still make a sports viz or two) and I hope that we can continue to build on the foundations that he helped to lay!
And that brings an end to the last blog post before Christmas. Thank you all for your amazing visualisations throughout the year - over 500 of them! It's been incredible to see such a flow of designs, analysis and technical ability. I'm already excited to see what you all do next year!
Merry Christmas!
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