Tableau's Sports Viz Contest - the Interactive Shot Chart

So Tableau have thrown down the gauntlet and it's the first data viz competition to see who gets to complete in the Iron Viz championship at the Customer Conference. I had the pleasure of watching the competition last year and it was great. Seeing three great visualisers tackle the same data set in so many different ways made me feel there is no right way - it's all about the experimentation to see what stories you can find.

This year's first challenge is to create a sports based visualisation. For me there was only every going to be one thing I was going to do and it was to create an interactive basketball shot chart. For a long time now, I have admired and followed the work of Kirk Goldsberry. For example:

Kirk's chart are simply beautiful, fun and clear. I really enjoy the comic book (graphic novel??) styling. But, I want a little more...

I want to understand: When the shot is happening? Who made the pass? What was the flow of the game at the time?

But linking the final pass to the shot tells an even more interesting story - click on the second tab to see how path analysis helps with this. Just check out Spurs dominance on the defence's right hand side after failing from the left before hand.

Therefore, I have created this as my entry in the Iron Viz competition. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed creating it.

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It's Tableau Sports Viz month

Anyone who knows me, knows I am basketball obsessed! 

I recently realised that I often form ideas when watching games. Who is the best 3 point shooting team? Who scores well from the three point line, but fails miserably as a foul shooter?

A while ago I created this for the 2011-2012 season (and will update shortly) but I have been watching games recently and haven't had my laptop close-by. So I'm publishing this to the blog so it is available whenever I get in to a debate about how great Kawhi Leonard is, I can prove it! 

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Previously on 24...

Fate made me make the first 24 visualisation due to a conversation in the office, and it has had it's hand in this follow up entry too.

With the help of the previous entry, my blog hit 24 hundred views (2,469 to be precise) so a follow up had to be made - fate made it so!

So what else can be looked at in 24 through the eyes of adata visualiser? Deaths, thats what. I stumbled up (read googled) a great source of 24 knowledge - a wiki dedicated to 24! Click the link, its' worth it: http://24.wikia.com/wiki/Deaths_on_24

So did Jack Bauer stop the 'Hostiles'? Were the public safe? Use the visualisation to explore who were the killers. And this is more evidence that you can truly create a data visualisation out of anything (especially with Tableau).

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So what can you visualise?

With rumours circulating the internet about a new Season of 24 (and a movie to boot!), I thought two things:

1. It's been a while since I watched a series and the English weather is defintely condusive to this at the moment.
2. Is it worth making Series 9?

Well, instantly, young Miss Jedi Ninja stuck Series 7 on Netflix and I reached for the laptop to create a visualisation exploring viewing figures over the different series. And this led me to a conclusion, data analysis through tools like Tableau, can now measure pretty much everything and you can analyse data to understand the wider context.

Recent data visualisation highlights for me covering Pinball Machines (@paulbanoub), fantasy basketball (@dataremixed) and burning off your favourite foods in the Gym (@matt_francis) show that there really isn't any topic that it is now not possible to create a data visualisation about to aid your decision making as to whether you are: trying to make your gym trip more efficient, winning your basketball fantasy league, or, running your own Pinball Arcade business.

So google what you are interested, see if you can find some numbers and see if you can find you the underlying story in the numbers. And then let the world know because you never know who you might be helping! (just maybe not as much as saving the World like Jack Bauer)

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Another disappointing Lions season draws to an end...

As a basketball fan growing up in England, my love of the NBA has been late to bloom. Well, when the time finally came to fall for the game, I first started to watch 'Football' through college games when Suh was dominating every game he played. Yes, I now know his disciplinary record is far from spotless!

Hence, when it came to him being drafted by Detroit, this fitted with me picking a team to follow. Oh why!! I hear you cry... Well for once the crowd is right. Here is my investigation in to whether individual player dominance on the offensive side of the ball brings success (as the other key Lions players are sitting on the offensive side after all). I have gone for a more journalistic style (the first foray of potentially many) to see if I can refine this art form. Thoughts in the comments below please and fingers crossed for next year!

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Was it always this bad? (Speed Visualisation)

It's dark outside and I have spent 10 hours with data at work and come home to find Tottenham have sacked yet another manager. So what is my coping mechanism, data visualisation of course. I wanted to explore whether I have lived through terrible Tottenham manager or has it always been this bad for Tottenham fans (yes the Double still offers a clue of the 'Glory Days' gone past). So i set myself a time limit of 30 minutes to create a visualisation to allow fellow fans to see whether they have it better or worse. Have you lived through a higher proportion of better managers than I have? Enter your date of birth to find out and use the filter to find out whether the Win % of managers you have lived through is better than mine (39%).

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Quality Father and Son (and Tableau) time

This weekend I took a trip home and at the same time, used some time with Senior Ninja (my Dad) to show him some of the work I do in Tableau. Four hours later, he was up and running and creating a visualisations on the fly.

So what did Tableau have to offer Senior Ninja?

Well first of all, Senior Ninja is a very active man in the community. He has many roles (sound engineer, theatre technician, electrical engineer... the list goes on) but one creates data... a lot of data. As part of his web design work, he has a MySQL database capturing the use of community Digital Cinemas. He has never queried this database to see what was going on because he never had the chance.

To make the Tableau example real, I took a csv extract and loaded it straight in to Tableau. In seconds we had 10,000 rows of data telling us stories: most popular films, when the equipment is used, what different locations prefer... the list goes on.

Well, just letting Senior Ninja have access to the data is useful but at the end of the day, he doesn't control the input of the data; the users do. One issue with the data is the terrible quality of the data. Easy to fix in Tableau, but it takes time, so why not incentise the users to put in top quality data?

The best way I have found to do this is to allow users to see the data they input. This is where Tableau Public comes in amazingly useful as Senior Ninja can host the visualisations alongside the data input on his website.

Making the data better, will allow for better analysis, which will allow for better use of equipment, that will support more members of the community.

Win, win, win, win, all thanks to a bit of software and some quality father and son time. 

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