Tag: bar chart

The History of the NHL

With the start of a new NHL season upon us, I thought I would visualize the historical performance of each NHL team. I used a format similar to my NHL Barcode Viz, except this time it’s not binary; rather, it charts Points Percentage above and below the .500 mark.

I took my inspiration from similar vizzes created by Chris Jones (MLB Franchise Performance) and Matt Chambers (The History of the NFL). I also took some pointers from Andy Kriebel in this blog post.

I have focused on seasons from 1967 to the present, i.e. the NHL’s “Expansion Era”, as only the Original Six teams were in existence prior to ’67. The franchises are ordered alphabetically within their current divisions, and with their current team names. Winning seasons are shown in the team’s colour, while losing seasons are in grey.

Makeover Monday: Public Transit Satisfaction Survey

Here’s my first attempt at a Makeover Monday viz.

This week’s featured graphic is from the Financial Times. It displays the results of a public transit satisfaction survey conducted across Europe. Respondents were asked to rate their satisfaction with public transit in their city.

Satisfaction with public transport - Financial Times

So how can we improve this viz? Let’s find out.

Here’s my version:

What improvements did I make?

  • Taking a hint from Zen Master Andy Kriebel, I centred the bars around a central axis, showing positive sentiment to the right and negative to the left. This makes is easier to judge the overall response.
  • I used an orange-green colour palette, with positive responses in green and negative responses in orange.
  • Instead of a traditional colour legend, I used colour-coded text labels along the top of the chart. I also aligned the city labels immediately beside the data bars. And I added data labels on the bars, instead of using a horizonal axis. The intent of these changes is to make the chart easier to read by more directly labeling the data.

All-Time Summer Olympic Medals

Prior to this past summer’s Olympic Games in Rio, I came across an interesting graphic from Reuters titled Precious Medals. It displays the all-time medal standings of the Summer Olympics, and allows you to drill into each country to view its performance over time.

All-Time Summer Olympic Medals: Reuters Graphics

I was impressed with the simplicity, yet sophistication of this presentation. The clean bar charts and appropriate use of colour keep the viz uncluttered. Yet, the interactivity allows a lot of information to be embedded within the graphic.

Naturally, I decided I would try to replicate this visualization myself with Tableau.

The result of my efforts is below: