Author Archives: Matt Stiles

I'm a data journalist at NPR. I try each day to create a data visualization, or I post those I find online. Let me know if you have ideas for future visualizations. Contact me: mattstiles at gmail.

“N.F.L. Draft: How Good Are Teams at Picking the Best?”


So how do Pro Bowl-caliber players go undetected until late in the draft? In part, it’s because assessing college players’ N.F.L. potential is very difficult. Collegiate success is no guarantee in the N.F.L.; offensive and defensive schemes vary widely; and, unlike in baseball or basketball, there are relatively few games in a college season, which means there are fewer observable events for scouts.

Read more at: www.nytimes.com

“China Still Dominates, But Some Manufacturers Look Elsewhere”


While China maintains its overwhelming dominance in manufacturing, multinational companies are looking for ways to limit their reliance on factories there. Related Article ” Economic Output In this map, geography is distorted so that each country is sized according to its economic output in 2012.

Read more at: www.nytimes.com

“The Rise of ‘In One Chart’ In One Chart”

Danny DeBelius asks on Twitter: “Have we reached peak ‘in one chart?’” One can only hope…


When The Washington Post’s Brad Plumer posted “This is actually the scariest chart about Europe” on Thursday morning, there was a spontaneous reaction of mockery on Twitter that could, in the style of many social movements, mark the beginning of a full-scale rebellion against the maniacal competition to create The One Chart That Will Rule Them All.

Read more at: www.theatlanticwire.com

“Gun Suicide and Homicide: Statistics Shaped by Race”


America’s pattern of gun deaths is split across black and white, with the vast majority of whites dying from suicide and a similar proportion of blacks dying from homicide. A similar split occurs with more homicide in diverse urban cities and more suicide in the rural areas that are predominantly white.

Read more at: www.washingtonpost.com

Charting NFL Injuries

The Washington Post has a fascinating story today about NFL players and injuries, with the local peg being Robert Griffin III’s knee injury. The gist:

Interviews with more than 50 doctors, players, agents, owners and medical ethicists suggest that what the NFL Physicians Society calls the game’s “unique clinical challenges” can result in inconsistent standards in treating players and cause some doctors to depart from best medical practices and safety norms.

These charts, which visualize the league’s injury reports over time, accompanied the story:

NFL injuries: 2010

Filed under: Sports, Line Chart, Washington Post

“The Optimal Number Of Categories In A Pie Chart”


It’s very simple, really: you do not compare proportions in a pie chart. Because a pie chart is not a comparison chart, it’s a part-to-whole chart. When you do this: what you really want to do is to compare each slice to the whole, like this: because, if you want to compare them you must do this: I hope that you find this pretty obvious.

Read more at: www.excelcharts.com

Charting The Premier League Season

Last fall I posted some Tufte-inspired sparkline charts to visualize how Major League Baseball teams fared during the 2012 season.

I’ve created something similar for clubs in the English Premier League, where the season is winding down with Manchester United holding a strong lead in points. This chart shows how they’ve done it — by winning, not just drawing, with their opponents. United has 21 wins so far, while their cross-town rivals — Manchester City — have just 15.

Matches that end in draws are still important to a club’s success in the league, but I wanted to see their performance in wins and losses. The lines on the chart represent the total number of games over .500 for all 20 clubs. Click here to see the interactive version.

TheDailyViz

TheDailyViz

Filed under: Sports, Highcharts, Line Charts, premier league