I learned about Many Eyes, the brainchild of scientists at IBM's lab in Cambridge, Mass., from my friend Adam. It's a Web tool that anyone can use to create visualizations of data. As a rabid fan of Edward Tufte (speaker, anti-PowerPoint crusader, and author of several books on the visualization of data, including The Visual Display of Quantitative Information), I had to pass it along.
There are already several visualizations on the site. Here's one that I found quite compelling, because it uses a "network diagram" to depict visually the medal count at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing:
Note: If the graphic does not appear above, it's because Many Eyes is moving databases around. I've had problems signing in and performing other basic tasks – IBM may not have devoted enough server space to Many Eyes.
I think it would be easier to understand if the countries and the sports were better differentiated, and I posted a comment to that effect (I accidentally went down as "Anonymous," which was annoying because anonymous posting is a pet peeve of mine). If you're looking for a specific country, you can select a sport in which you know that country medaled, and all of the countries with medals in the sport light up; you'll then have an easier time of finding the country. (Of course, the same is true the other way around.)
I also think this visualization would be improved if you could find the actual data by rolling over a country or sport; for instance, if you hold the mouse over "Boxing" a pop-up window appears to list the countries that medaled in that sport. But these are minor quibbles, and I'm not even sure if it's possible to make those changes.
I love that you can pull apart different elements to get a better handle on the information. And the interactivity doesn't stop there: this is also a forum, by which IBM accomplishes two things. First, it is better enabled to improve this tool and its subsets through user feedback. Second, IBM provides an additional service to its users: free consultation from the thousands of other users who frequent the site. Many Eyes thereby builds a solid user base.
Showing posts with label olympic games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label olympic games. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
[SPORTS]
"I Had to Finish the Race"
The men's and women's 4 x 100m relay teams' baton hand-off whiffs today at the Olympic Stadium in Beijing will be hard for the athletes and USA Track & Field to live down.
Darvis "Doc" Patton and Lauryn Williams – the latter of whom suffered the same fate in Athens four years ago – both made extremely candid, mature, and gracious remarks in their interviews immediately after their respective heats. Their successful struggles to maintain their composure were heartbreaking to watch.
It's very, very, very difficult to carry a coherent conversation immediately after a disappointing performance at the Olympic Games, when what you're actually thinking is "AAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!" and you're nearly overcome with a desire to bash your own brains out against a concrete wall. To most viewers, it may be hard to understand just why an athlete looks to be on the verge of tears – after all, there are worse things in life than to be so privileged as even to be at the Games, right?
But imagine having spent, say, 12 years working your ass off on something – something that has required 100% of your focus to the detriment of all else in your life. And it's not just that you have to excel at the day-to-day training – you also have to avoid illness, boredom, mental burnout, injury, distractions, fatigue, self-doubt, poor nutrition, and 1000 other threats, big and small, to your place ahead of the hundreds of other people nipping at your heels to take your place. Now, add the 80,000 live spectators, the 1 billion television viewers, and the butterflies in your stomach that feel more like monkeys on speed. You literally lose a little control of your bladder at the starting line.
Just to get to this point, you've had to treat your effort with a sense of purpose extreme enough enough to require an elevated level of narcissism and self-seriousness. And this perhaps hasn't escaped your notice, causing moments of doubt along the way about what you're doing with your life.
Now, having done everything to a T, you get out there and things just don't go the way they were supposed to. What's your reaction? "AAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!"
In the women's race, while the rest of the field went on to finish, Ms Williams turned back to pick up the baton, and she booked it to the finish line. Talk about an "Olympic moment," the kind of thing that will go down in history. Again: you've worked all those years for this, and, come hell or high water, you are going to get across that damn finish line.
When NBC later asked her about this after her heat, Ms Williams said, simply and emphatically, in a way that revealed her passion and determination, "I had to finish the race."
 Lauryn Williams (left) and Torri Edwards (right) dropping the baton in their 4 x 100m relay heat (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko). |
Darvis "Doc" Patton and Lauryn Williams – the latter of whom suffered the same fate in Athens four years ago – both made extremely candid, mature, and gracious remarks in their interviews immediately after their respective heats. Their successful struggles to maintain their composure were heartbreaking to watch.
It's very, very, very difficult to carry a coherent conversation immediately after a disappointing performance at the Olympic Games, when what you're actually thinking is "AAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!" and you're nearly overcome with a desire to bash your own brains out against a concrete wall. To most viewers, it may be hard to understand just why an athlete looks to be on the verge of tears – after all, there are worse things in life than to be so privileged as even to be at the Games, right?
But imagine having spent, say, 12 years working your ass off on something – something that has required 100% of your focus to the detriment of all else in your life. And it's not just that you have to excel at the day-to-day training – you also have to avoid illness, boredom, mental burnout, injury, distractions, fatigue, self-doubt, poor nutrition, and 1000 other threats, big and small, to your place ahead of the hundreds of other people nipping at your heels to take your place. Now, add the 80,000 live spectators, the 1 billion television viewers, and the butterflies in your stomach that feel more like monkeys on speed. You literally lose a little control of your bladder at the starting line.
Just to get to this point, you've had to treat your effort with a sense of purpose extreme enough enough to require an elevated level of narcissism and self-seriousness. And this perhaps hasn't escaped your notice, causing moments of doubt along the way about what you're doing with your life.
Now, having done everything to a T, you get out there and things just don't go the way they were supposed to. What's your reaction? "AAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!"
In the women's race, while the rest of the field went on to finish, Ms Williams turned back to pick up the baton, and she booked it to the finish line. Talk about an "Olympic moment," the kind of thing that will go down in history. Again: you've worked all those years for this, and, come hell or high water, you are going to get across that damn finish line.
When NBC later asked her about this after her heat, Ms Williams said, simply and emphatically, in a way that revealed her passion and determination, "I had to finish the race."
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