I am not a scientist nor do I have a background in the "hard sciences" (my degree is in Political Science). However, I am a strong advocate for the Chesapeake Bay and have been actively involved in a variety of activities and organizations that are trying to clean up, preserve, and protect the Chesapeake Bay.
The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in North America. At one time it was teeming with fish, crabs, and oysters. However, after centuries of water pollution, air pollution, over-development along its shores, over-fishing, and agricultural runoff, it is currently in a very distressed condition.
I am currently conversing with a local watershed group about using Tableau as a tool to visualize the data that this specific local group collects about their waterway. People are always wanting to know the condition of the waterway either out of general concern, or because they want to know if it is okay to swim or fish in the water. During our initial conversation they recommended that I take a look at the data that the Chesapeake Bay Program makes available to the public. So I downloaded a set of data focusing on three primary metrics: dissolved oxygen, secchi disk depth, and water temperature.
A while back hockey fan extraordinaire @StephHartigan ranked NHL teams by her own set of personal criteria. As I am always looking for new, unique data sets to play with in Tableau, she graciously provided me with a google docs spreadsheet of her rankings. I took her team rankings and turned it into an interactive viz that she can share with her friends so they can have a better understanding of why she might choose one team over another.
Everyone makes mistakes. Unfortunately, it seems like I make more mistakes than most. Also, sometimes it seems I make more obvious mistakes than others. Such is the case with my "Birds and Bees" viz from last year.
Tableau is holding one of their regular visualization contests. Their Interactive Biz Viz Contest challenges Tableau users to take business data (any business data) and turn it into an informative, interactive data visualization using Tableau. They give you some suggestions for data sets that are available. I chose venture Capital data from the National Venture Capital Association. Check it out...
The 2011-2012 NHL regular season is finished, and the first round of the playoffs is well underway. During the latter part of the hockey season, I took some time to revise and update my original NHL player stats data viz. I ended up with something radically different than what I created last summer for the Tableau sports data contest. It is not #fancystats, like what Neil Greenberg specializes in, but I think looking at hockey data in this format is fun and informative. Check it out...
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...
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.
