Statistical Graphics and more

As the FC Bayern München already won the German Soccer league many weeks ago (and consequently dropped out of the remaining contests), no one was really interested in the Bundesliga any longer – no one? Being boring at one end of the table does not mean that the other end is boring as well. And quite […]

Each year after the group stage, there is the much awaited drawing of the eighth-final, which essentially defines a team’s fate. So far the thing is not too complicated, as there are 16 teams out of which we need to generate 8 games – no problem if it would be possible to draw the teams without […]

With Big Data and the internet, we all feel like we can know and analyze everything. Certainly Google must feel that way, as they collect not only data, but also what we – the users – find interesting in that vast pile of information. As we should always keep in mind: Google is not charity […]

It is bold to post this after 30 mins in the game, but what can you say … (Just to make sure, this is just meant as an example for effective visualization 😉 )

I feel ashamed for this boring title, but hope that the entry can make up for it. This visualization did inspire me, as a comment did point to my Tour de France visualizations. As with all visualizations, we need data first – this sounds trivial, but is sometimes a frustrating show-stopper. After I found the […]

The German Bundesliga has its (very short) winter break after 17, i.e., half the games played. We all know – or at least would not disagree immediately – that good players will cost a team a fortune, and the more a team can invest, the better will be the result. Using the (potential) value of […]

Now that the world cup is over, and we finally have a winner, it is time to compare the expected values with the real outcome – don’t mix this up with comparing the outcome we would have liked to see with the real outcome, which is often done in business analytics … The expected values […]

There are certainly many models, which try to “calculate” which team will win the 2010 soccer world cup. Looking at the teams that already dropped out, the range of models which were obviously not predicting correctly gets quite big. Here is a visualization of my favorite: For those of you, who more believe in numbers […]

It did start with only three players and the keeper on the board, which I used to explain my kids (first graders and below) what offside means, and their creativity expanded it to what looks like Joachim Löw’s strategy for the Ghana match next Wednesday: Let’s proceed with fingers crossed! (The strategy on the board […]

Special times fuel the development in specific areas. E.g., during WWII a lot of (sometimes curios) inventions and technical optimizations came up – usually not supporting humanity. The Soccer World Cup seems to spur the development of soccer visualizations and sports visualizations in general. My favorite (and apparently not only mine) one is this overview: Querying […]