Player Nationalities for Hockey Day Across America

Yesterday, the NHL participated in USA Hockey's Hockey Weekend Across America with their own Hockey Day Across America activities.  For hockey fans, such as myself, it is great to see the sport of hockey being promoted in the United States.  The day featured some great games on national television, and had special events around the country to encourage kids and families to try out hockey for the first time.


The television line up featured three great games:  St. Louis Blues vs Chicago Blackhawks, Pittsburgh Penguins vs. Buffalo Sabres, and the  Detroit Red Wings vs. San Jose Sharks. There was only one disappointment however -- the Red Wings dominated the airwaves yesterday.  (Full disclosure:  I am a St. Louis Blues fan which means I am very much biased against the Red Wings.)  In fact, Laura (@hildymac), from the blog Thrashing the Blues, and I had a Twitter conversation about this most disturbing aspect of HDAA.  As an out-of-town Blues fan, it is rare that we get to see them on national TV.  After all, the Blues/Blackhawks rivalry is a great rivalry, and as Laura duly noted there were quite a few US born players on both the Blackhawks and Blues teams.  So why not give  the Blues/Blackhawks game more national coverage instead of giving it mainly regional coverage?


This got me to thinking...

FDIC Bank Closings -- Tableau Demo for Work

Some of the staff where I work are interested in a demo of Tableau.  Basically they want to know what it is, how does it work, and how we are using it.  So I downloaded the FDIC Failed Banks list from Data.gov and used this data set to show them how easy it is to create a quick interactive data visualization that can be embedded into a blog post.  I actually made this right in front of them as part of the demo.  It took about 10 minutes max.

“You miss 100% of the shots you never take.”

I love that quote from Wayne Gretzky even though it is obvious and has become a bit cliche'.


The St. Louis Blues had a little bit of extra time off after the All-Star game.  Tonight is their first game since the break.  I wanted to publish one more data viz before they started back up again.  After that, I will probably wait till the end of the season to publish any additional hockey data visualizations.


This visualization is taking a look at their goal scoring (or as many Blues' fans would say -- their lack of goal scoring).  They need to score more goals if they want to remain competitive for the remainder of the season and (hopefully) the playoffs.  So I put together something that shows who has the best goal percentage, goals per game, which players need to improve their goal scoring ability, and which players need to shoot the puck more!

St. Louis Blues Players Performance at the All-Star Break

 The NHL All-Star break is the perfect time to get caught up on player stats and to take a look at their performance during the first half of the season.  I haven't published anything for a while and I've been dying to do a hockey viz.  So I took advantage of the empty schedule, scraped the data, and here are the results.

PNC 12 Days of Christmas Price Index

Since 1984, PNC Bank has been issuing their 12 Days of Christmas Price Index.  This index is comprised of the costs of all 12 gifts in the song from the 12 Days of Christmas.  I have heard of the index in the past, but didn't know that it was PNC who put it together or that they have been doing so since 1984.  They have a really fun website this year that involves interactive flash video.  You should definitely right click on this link and "open in new tab" and go check it out.  I'll wait for ya...


PNC 12 Days of Christmas Price Index


I would think this could be fun for children or (if you are like me) those who are a child at heart.


Fortunately, PNC makes their historical data  (.xls file) available for the general public.  So in an effort to spread some Christmas cheer via interactive data visualizations I put together a dashboard of sorts to explore the Christmas Price Index from 1984 till 2011.

Lies, Damn Lies, & Statistics

So I fell in love with data and charts back as an undergrad when I took my Political Science methodology class (thank you Professor Folger).  It is then that I learned how they can be used to help explain what happens in the world around us.  However, I also learned how they can be manipulated in such a way to create a false explanation or mislead someone.  That is why the quote in the title has to be one of my favorite sayings of all time.  So much so, that my friends and co-workers roll their eyes every time I say it.


Most of the time the manipulations of data are subtle and those manipulating the data can justify how they are presenting their results.  However, sometimes the manipulation is so outlandish you wonder if it was done purposefully or out of incompetence.  For instance, for those of you who follow data visualization topics or media watchdog groups, you have probably already heard about the Fox News unemployment chart.  I first read about it at FlowingData who links to MediaMatters about this story.  You should definitely check out the comments section for the article at FlowingData for a lively discussion of politics, Fox News, and data.


Here is the Fox News chart for those who missed the story...

Can you spot what is wrong with this chart?  

FDIC Bank Closings

I continued to explore the data sets at data.gov after I finished my Gov Data contest entry.  I stumbled across this data set that was nice and clean and obvious.  Sort of makes me wish I submitted this for the contest instead of the renewable energy visual.