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How Jingoistic Was NBC's, CBC's, BBC's Olympics Coverage On Thursday?
On Wednesday, our Jingometer started tracking how often NBC was mentioning the U.S./USA/America/Americans/United States, and found that, at peak coverage, over 40 percent of the network's participant mentions were for the Land of the Free. But this number doesn't mean much in a vacuum. How does NBC'...
Chart: Does Your Choice Of Candy Reveal Your Politics?
We already covered this for booze, but the research firm NMRPP has released a chart showing the political leanings (x-axis) and voter turnout (y-axis) of various major candy brands. Bubble size is proportional to the population of survey respondents who ate each type of candy....
Which NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL Teams Have The Best Local Fan Bases?
Nielsen released its annual "Year in Sports Media Report" last week, a fascinating look into who consumed sports in 2013 and how they did so. There's tons of great trend data if you're into this sort of thing—TV viewership is down for the NBA while every other sport has grown; mobile devices are tak...
Who Are The "Bad Boys" Of Winter Olympic Sports?
Alpine skiing: Bode Miller ("undisciplined bad boy")...
How Jingoistic Was NBC's Olympics Coverage On Tuesday?
One of the fun, dumb joys of the Olympics is the opportunity the Games offer for unbridled jingoism. So what if you don't care about cross-country skiing? Kikkan Randall is TEAM USA. Forget the difference between short- and long-track speed skating? Doesn't matter—it's just twice as much TEAM USA. ...
The Evolution Of The Halfpipe: Faster, Higher, Safer?
The men's halfpipe final was sort of a disaster today, as a terribly maintained Sochi course led to falls (or at least slips) for most of the major competitors. But, hey, no one got hurt! ...
Speed Skaters Have Gotten A Lot Faster Since 1924
Similar to what The New York Times did for the 100m dash in 2012, The Wall Street Journal has developed a great graphic to show just how much faster the top speed skaters have gotten over the years. The still above is part of an animation pitting every male 500m gold medalist against each other; the...
Map: Where In America Can You Watch Canada's Great Olympic Coverage?
It's no secret that NBC's Olympic coverage kind of blows, especially compared to what our northern neighbors are getting. Leaving aside issues like lack of live coverage, schmaltzy human interest stories, and Bob Costas's eye, Canada simply gets more Olympics: 1,519 hours on the Canadian Broadcastin...
Here Are This Year's Sloan Finalist Papers—And Their Biggest Issue
The eight finalists for the paper contest at MIT's Sloan Conference—the most prestigious and most branded sports analytics conference in the U.S.—were announced this week. They're a fascinating mix of creative problem solving and impresario number-wrangling, and if you read through them, you'll see ...
The Beautiful Infographics Of Ted Williams's <em>The Science Of Hitting</em>
In 1971, Ted Williams and John Underwood released The Science of Hitting, the definitive treatment of the subject. Few great athletes have ever been so articulate about the mechanics of their greatness, which is one reason the book holds up even today, well into the analytics era. (A decade ago, Sci...
Model Predicts That The U.S. Is Going To Dominate Sochi
We're nearly past the Opening Ceremony, so it's time to get serious: Who's going to win the Winter Olympics? Based on an analysis of economic and geographic data from participating countries through Winter Olympic history, Dan and Tim Graettinger have built out a model for medal performance at the g...
Cool Chart: The Altitudes And Latitudes Of Winter Olympics Hosts
Over at the Washington Post, Darla Cameron, Cristina Rivero and Gene Thorp have created an excellent graphic comparing the latitude, host city altitude, and skiing venue altitude of every Winter Olympics since 1960. Squaw Valley, Ca. was the highest host city and Salt Lake City was the highest ski v...
This New NBA Stat Is A Huge Step Forward For Basketball Analysis
This morning on Grantland, Kirk Goldsberry introduced the stat Expected Possession Value Added (EPVA), which he developed with some colleagues as part of a Sloan Conference paper. EPVA still needs some work, but it may represent an enormous development in NBA analysis. Here's why....
The Durant-LeBron Arms Race Is Real—And Statistically Unprecedented
We mentioned this back in November, but LeBron James and Kevin Durant—the two best basketball players in this galactic quadrant—are outdoing themselves in 2013-14. Here are some per game lines:...
Beautiful Maps Reveal Where People Run In 22 Major Cities
Over on FlowingData, Nathan Yau pulled public data from the tracking site RunKeeper.com to map out the common running routes of twenty major cities. The results are neat to look at, but it's also interesting to see the park systems, waterways, and urban grids of these cities come to come life....
What Winter Olympics Venues Would Look Like In Manhattan
In an inspired piece of goofy scaling, the NY Times graphics department has plopped several Winter Olympic venues into various parts of Manhattan, just to give you a better sense of how absolutely enormous they are. Pictured above is the ski jump course, towering over the New York Public Library and...
Who Was America Rooting For Last Night?
As it's done for the every round of the playoffs, Facebook put together a map showing where each Super Bowl team had more Facebook fans (above). The Broncos—an older, more centralized team with two NFL championships—had more national support, while Seahawks fandom was mostly contained to the Pacific...
Just How Bad Was That Super Bowl? Updating Our Watchability Rankings
Last year we ranked all 47 Super Bowls on "watchability," a stat we devised based on performance against the spread, total scoring, closeness, and quality of finish. We ran the numbers for last night's massacre, and Super Bowl XLVIII ranks as the sixth-least watchable matchup of all time, and the wo...
The Offensive/Defensive Matchup Of Super Bowl XLVIII Is Historic
Everyone knows that Denver has a good offense and Seattle has a good defense, but The Guardian data viz team has put together a great series of charts showing how this matchup stacks up against every other Super Bowl since 1970, using the stat "average yards per play"....