March 7, 2016
Makeover Monday: How Safe Are You at Your Local Fairground?
Over the next two weeks of Makeover Monday, we’ll be taking a look back at visualisation that Andy and I did in the past that we would do differently today. One of the most fun aspects of this is it helps us see how far we’ve come in our development, and it also helps the community see that we’re not perfect. We make lots of mistakes and have done poor vizzes in the past.
This week we look back at this viz Andy created in 2010 about fairground injuries. Click on the viz to interact with the original.
What works well?
- Clearly organized
- Simple and easy to understand
- Includes interactivity (more on this below)
- Clear titles
- Distinct colours
What doesn’t work well?
- When you click on a year, the accidents chart doesn’t re-sort
- Clicking off the year doesn’t reset the accidents chart
- Fatalities are so small they are hard to see
- Year labels rotates sideways
Last week at the Data School, we watched Andy Cotgreave’s talk entitled "How Data Storytelling Can Enhance the Way You Communicate?” and in this session Andy talked about vertical vs. horizontal visualisations as a method of storytelling. I’m doing my best to use Makeover Monday to help me develop my design and storytelling skills, so this week I wanted to created a vertical story.
October 13, 2014
Makeover Monday: Arsenal's Injury Crisis - A Story
I found this story fascinating because it finally put numbers to Arsenal's perceived injury crisis. They do indeed suffer way more injuries than any other EPL team. But what bothered me about the ESPN story was that they basically just listed off a few key facts (quoted from ESPN):
- Arsenal players have sustained 889 injuries since August 2002, according to a report by PhysioRoom.com.
- The Gunners' 889 injuries over the 12-year period compare to 792 for Manchester United, 620 for Chelsea and 551 for Liverpool.
- Abou Diaby, who has recently returned to fitness, has endured 40 separate injuries, according to the study, while Theo Walcott, who is currently recovering from a serious knee problem, features 42 times.
- PhysioRoom.com claims 120 of the injuries were of the hamstring variety while six anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) have been suffered.
Without comparing Arsenal to their rivals, how do I know how bad their injury crisis really is? If they're suffering injuries at the same rate as their rivals, then maybe there isn't a crisis after all. But if their rate of injury is higher, then perhaps there is more to the story. Have Arsenal players always been injury-prone or have they increased since they moved to the Emirates Stadium with its rock hard surface?
I set out to understand more by downloading the injury reports from PhysioRoom.com for all teams that have participated in every year of the EPL since 2002-03 (plus a few others that are not included in my final story below). You can download the data in Excel format here.
