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posted by LaminatorX on Sunday October 19 2014, @09:52PM   Printer-friendly
from the Sports-all! dept.

This is old news, but still pretty neat for USA sports fans. It's an example of maps illuminating collections of data. Facebook published a fan map showing which NFL team "rules" each county across the USA, based on counts of "likes" by its user base. Evidently the Dallas Cowboys can make a case of being "America's Team" (the nickname they came up for themselves back in their glory years), despite having won exactly one playoff game over the past sixteen years (they're doing surprisingly well this year, though).

I thought of this map when I saw yesterday's tweet from Edward Tufte, statistician and author of "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information":

Edward Tufte @EdwardTufte

If your statistics are boring, then you've got the wrong numbers. Relevance and credibility are content properties; chartooning can't help.

Earlier this year, Facebook published a similar county-by-county fan map for Major League Baseball.

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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday October 19 2014, @11:10PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 19 2014, @11:10PM (#107640)

    Any GUIs based on Tufte-ian principles of being useful?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 19 2014, @11:25PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 19 2014, @11:25PM (#107644)

      Not PowerPoint [ha.uth.gr]...

  • (Score: 5, Funny) by kaszz on Sunday October 19 2014, @11:22PM

    by kaszz (4211) on Sunday October 19 2014, @11:22PM (#107643) Journal

    Countries with sports free zones. ;-)

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 19 2014, @11:26PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 19 2014, @11:26PM (#107646)

    Edward Tufte @EdwardTufte

    If your statistics are boring, then you've got the wrong numbers. Relevance and credibility are content properties; chartooning can't help.

    Uh, what?

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by fadrian on Sunday October 19 2014, @11:26PM

    by fadrian (3194) on Sunday October 19 2014, @11:26PM (#107647) Homepage

    Oddly enough, teams are liked in a geographical region that surrounds the team. Which seems blindingly obvious. More interesting would to see an actual fan count (based on statistical sampling for each county) for each team.

    The baseball map is interesting in one respect - it shows that only the Yankees and Red Sox have any major pool of fans outside their own geographic region. I would have expected more for the Braves and Cubs, given the nation-wide coverage via TBS and WGN - but the former is now pay and the Cubs (as usual) are dire, so I guess that makes sense. The other thing that was interesting (at least to me as an Illinois boy) is that the White Sox are pretty much a Chicago-area team only.

    But then, to me, the economics of the whole thing are a lot more interesting than the games, anyway.

    --
    That is all.
    • (Score: 0) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday October 19 2014, @11:58PM

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday October 19 2014, @11:58PM (#107650) Homepage

      Goddammit Chargers, what the fuck happened with you today?

      But more on-topic, even though the map shows that my area supports its local team, the people who actually go to the games or watch them at bars here look like a rainbow of different jersey colors. San Diego is a military city as well as a college one so there are a lot of Steelers and Cowboys trash with their beat-up pasty-faced bleached-blonded women wearing large-diameter hoop-earrings and being tossed up by Black men in the porta-potties of the Qualcomm Stadium parking lot.

      This is why you want to associate with Charger fans, because they are the most wholesome of NFL fans, and female Charger fans are not trash ghetto bitches like female Raiders fans are. We're going to the 'Bowl this year, and we're gonna crush the fucking Cowboys when we do.

      Chargers fuck yeah!

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 20 2014, @12:12AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 20 2014, @12:12AM (#107653)

        Too bad Norv isn't still running the team.

        - rest of the NFL's fans

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 20 2014, @12:03AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 20 2014, @12:03AM (#107651)

      Oddly enough, teams are liked in a geographical region that surrounds the team. Which seems blindingly obvious.

      It does show that, but if you're a fan you can stare at the blown-up version for awhile and keep seeing things that are interesting. For example, it's interesting to see where the boundary line falls within Connecticut separating the Boston fans from the New York City fans. Apparently the Patriots have almost all of CT now (except for the southwestern counties, with Stamford and Greenwich where lots of Wall Street traders live and work), whereas the MLB map shows that the Yankees still take Hartford, the state's biggest city. Obviously, the Yankees' long history of winning world championships has something to do with that, but also it could be that Mets are so weak a draw that they don't really split the NY fans in CT, the way that the Jets might peel some fans away from the Giants.

      Similarly, the Cowboys dominate Texas and Oklahoma (not a surprise) but also Arkansas, New Mexico and a lot of Nevada, and have pockets of supports around the country. MLB's Texas Rangers, who haven't yet won the World Series, don't quite have that range.

    • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 20 2014, @09:24PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Monday October 20 2014, @09:24PM (#107981) Journal

      the Cubs (as usual) are dire

      That's because I laid an ever-lasting curse upon them that's way, way more powerful than the one the Babe laid on Boston. And, no, I feel no need to apologize to Cubs fans for it as they are the accursed of Satan.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
      • (Score: 2) by fadrian on Tuesday October 21 2014, @06:21AM

        by fadrian (3194) on Tuesday October 21 2014, @06:21AM (#108119) Homepage

        Cubs fans ... are the accursed of Satan.

        Yes, we know. No need to rub it in.

        --
        That is all.
  • (Score: 3, Funny) by halcyon1234 on Monday October 20 2014, @01:43AM

    by halcyon1234 (1082) on Monday October 20 2014, @01:43AM (#107664)
    They're using likes, and comments like "Go Cowboys!"? I bet companies who sell to sarcastic nerds would love to see the heatmap for the "Sportsball" team, then.
    --
    Original Submission [thedailywtf.com]
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 20 2014, @09:26PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Monday October 20 2014, @09:26PM (#107982) Journal

    I would be interested to see cross-tabs on demographics and age. I have read for years that young males have been abandoning sports for video games, and with the impending implosion of cable TV (due in large part to millenial disinterest) it will suck a lot of the money and momentum out of professional sports.

    Long live the Age of the Geek!

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.