I'm back!

Wow. It’s been a LONG TIME since I made my last post here on Blogger... the last time I posted, the 9.0 earthquake-tsunami devastated Japan; India won the cricket World Cup; Jason Garrett was a rookie head coach for the Cowboys and Derrick Rose was the NBA MVP and Dirk Nowitzki won his only title by the end of the 2010-2011 season.

Well, the reason I am posting now is that I have just discovered the power of a new computer program - Tableau. It’s a data visualization software for desktops, to put it bluntly. Data is so boring to stare at, and I am not much of a stat guy... and that’s where Tableau comes into play. You can take various forms of data - from Excel files to Amazon/Google/Oracle cloud databases - and import them to Tableau; from there, you can just simply drag-and-drop various variables to create wonderful visual representations.

Which brings me to tonight. I have been taking a Tableau class at my local community college for about a month now, and it wraps-up this Saturday morning. I decided to create three dashboards, each showing the Top 100 NFL players of 2017 (last year’s data) from three different data sources; the first/main one depicts the data as an average from:

The NFL players (what was on TV over the summer last year)

ESPN’s staff rankings

Pro Football Focus (PFF - a statistics-based sports business)

The social media forum Reddit (in which I was among 50 or so users that gave our rankings)

The second dashboard shows just the ESPN data, while the third dashboard shows the Reddit data. Each dashboard has the players sorted by team (and division) on the leftmost bar chart; how they are grouped nationally on a contiguous US map on the right; and on the bottom, by position, with the names and rankings on the bottom-rightmost table.

The great part about Tableau is that you can toggle among the various features. The dropdown on the absolute bottom-left corner allows you to sort by team; the radio buttons on the top-right sort by playoff/non-playoff teams; and clicking on any of the individual bars or pie chart (on the map) will sort by team; you can also click on the ESPN/NFL logo/Reddit snoo logos to go to the other two databases.

Here’s the final product... I hope you like it!

Click here to see the visualization.

I Have Moved!

The reason I have not been making posts as of late is that I have made the move to Tumblr - another blog posting site. I will rarely use this blog site, since I now use Tumblr often. One of my colleagues was raving about her own Tumblr, and last month, I decided to check out the fuss over that blog site - and now I am hooked.

Click on the below image to check it out!

What a Weekend - NCAA Style!

Where do I begin? From Friday's STUNNING upset of #2 Oklahoma State to the dismantling of one of the top Atlantic Coast Conference teams in Clemson - I have absolutely no idea of who is the #2 team in the land right now.

But Who Is #2?

Actually, I do have some idea - it's definitely NOT Boise State (weak, WEAK schedule, even with one loss), Clemson (has today's back-breaking loss in which they didn't even show up to play), Oklahoma or Oregon (both with two losses, despite their strength-of-schedule).

Using the current BCS standings, that leaves us with formerly #3 Alabama (10-1), #6 Arkansas (10-1), #8 Virginia Tech (10-1), #9 Stanford (10-1) and #11 Houston (11-0). All of these teams WILL rise in the standings based on the domino effect of losses this weekend. We can eliminate Houston and Virginia Teach being the #2 seed based on their strength of schedule - Houston has NOT faced a current top-25 team, and VT has only faced one in their division - Clemson - and lost to them.

That leaves us Alabama, Arkansas and Stanford. The Cardinal has only faced #4 Oregon (and lost). Arkansas has faced the Crimson Tide (and lost), #24 Auburn (won), #12 South Carolina (won), and will face #1 LSU in a CRUCIAL, PIVOTAL SEC matchup. Alabama has faced #21 Penn State (won), Arkansas (won, obviously) and lost to #1 LSU last week in a defensive dogfight, 9-6 in OT. They too face a tough SEC battle in the Auburn Tigers next week.

THEN:

If, and I mean IF Arkansas beats LSU on Friday night, we WILL have a mess as to who will be #1. But we'll get to that bridge when we come to it. After today's CRAZY weekend, my take using deductive reasoning is that #3 Alabama Crimson Tide WILL BE the #2 team in the BCS rankings that are released later today - they have faced tougher opponents and have come up victorious outside of the LSU loss.


NOW:

Like a Boss!

My boss, who is a senior at the University of Maryland, got accepted into one of the law schools he applied to - DePaul University Law School. To congratulate his success, my colleague made him a cake - and it looks fantastic!