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.

The story so far...

Three Tableau contests, and over 1000 page views later I thought I would take a moment to review my latest contest entry and put together a data viz using the page view data for my blog.

Historical Renewable Energy Consumption: Public Data Viz Contest Submission

Tableau is having another data viz contest with a focus on government or public data.  I had some success in working with data from the U.S. Energy Information Agency before, so I thought I would use one of their data sets again.  I have had my eye on the renewable energy consumption data for awhile and this contest was the motivation to get off my duff and design a data viz with it.  


So here is my official submission for the Tableau contest.  Take a look, let me know what you think, and wish me luck!

Birds do it...Bees do it...

A few weeks back I put together a chart using data available from the USA National Phenology Network about the Tiger Salamanders that were observed in Battleboro, NC.  This data set is perfect for someone like me looking for data to use in Tableau.  It has a nice variety of data types:  categories, dates of observation, latitude/longitude.  Makes it fun to play with.  For instance, here is a data viz featuring birds and bees that were observed while engaged in reproductive activities.

Let me know what you think.