OT - Charts & Graphs Geeks
Thought you charts & graphs freaks would enjoy this from the NY Times - very cool:
GO BLUE!
This is an interesting post - thanks. At the end of the video, the narrator notes that some of the 3 second increase in 100M times over the years is due to changes in track construction and in shoes/spikes (i.e., advances in equipment). I doubt it's possible to do a really meaningful reductive anlaysis on this, but I wonder how much track surfaces and improved footwear improve 100M times.
My guess is that improvements in equipment technology don't have the same impact in sprinting that they have in other sports like cycling, and that the bulk of the historic improvement in 100M times is due to improved nutrition, training techniques, the spread of good coaching, and more worldwide participation (competition improving performance).*
Any ideas on how we could drill down on measuring the proportionate impact of new equipment on ever-lower sprint times? Sprinting seems like a sport that's difficult to isolate the proportionate impact of new technology.You can measure similar aspects in (among others) cycling, swimming, golf and get a good read on how much equipment affects performance (wind tunnels, slow-motion photography, computer modeling). What would you use to quantify new technology's impact on sprinting performance?
* Of course sprinting's a discipline where thousandths of seconds matter, so even minimal impact due to technology can be meaningful in any given year. I'm thinking of the historical improvement. How much of the three seconds is due to equipment?
I suppose you could replicate the conditions of past races and have Bolt run and see how much it afects his time.
Agreed, though I would prefer a study where you gather 100 college level sprinters to each run three heats with something like 30 mins in between on both a top modern surface and then the same routine the following day in the exact same conditions on old fashioned surfaces with old fashioned equipment. Half run Day 1 on modern and Day 2 on old fashioned, the other half the opposite.
Would be a cool experiment. Discovery channel?
I dont think Alojz Sokol heard the gun.
Most misleading Subject line of all time, but cool nevertheless.
I guess it can be considered to be a single graph? But yeah, bad title. I was hoping for a link about the art of graphs.
Also the long jump.
know what software they used to produce it? Very cool and informative way to manage a lot of data rapidly and capture a viewer's interest.
The NYTimes graphics department actually maintains a blog in which their members discuss in some amount of detail the processes by which they produce their many really excellent graphics. There's nothing up on this particular graphic, but I wouldn't be surprised if something got posted soon.
blog!
EDIT: It looks like they may be former students of Edward Tufte, the Yale Professor who has championed innovative graphical representation of data for decades.