Sports isotype.

Isotype, basically a specific language of pictograms, was developed by Otto Neurath in the 1920s. Initially intended for use in the education of children, isotype has since seen many applications in the field of infographics. I first became aware of the immense potential for isotype after seeing this incredible graphic by the New York Times. After a bit of thinking, I came to the realization that the marriage of sports statistics and isotype is a wonderful opportunity for some informative graphics.

So the first step was the creation of my little sports figures. I don't have a very strong background in icon or symbol design, so this process had its difficulties. But here are the results:










I've also thrown together a couple small graphics that show the potential application of these graphics, so I'll post those soon. In the meantime, here are few more isotype resources I found particularly inspiring. First, a neat post with lots of retro maps and isotype. Second, an article about Neurath's artist and partner, Gerd Arntz. Third, and a little unrelated but equally inspiring and in the spirit of isotype, a collection of all the Olympic pictograms used since their introduction in 1964. And as an added bonus, here are the new pictograms for the Vancouver 2010 winter games.

Graphing success.

After determining the formula for the Cities of Champions graphic, the next important step was finding ways of illustrating the histories of those franchises. Because this poster was about Cities of Champions, we were mainly concerned with graphing success and not failures. Whatever technique we graphed success with, I had hoped failures would be clearly indicated by empty space. After all, sometimes nothing speaks louder than a blank space in the win column. Just ask the 2009 Detroit Lions or any of the last sixteen (and most likely future twenty) renditions of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Because our formula took into account league championships, conference championships, playoff qualifications, and winning seasons, we wanted our charts to clearly illustrate those factors.

Our first few attempts played with using a combination of icons and colors to represent those factors. After illustrating a few cities with these techniques, we took a step back and evaluated what was successful and not successful about this effort. First, it was a step towards being a valuable reference because it clearly displayed the postseason success of each team. However, it lacked two things: it was hard to see trends and winning seasons were not illustrated.




For our second attempt, we took a step back to reevaluate how to best show trends. Briefly, we looked at using color and only color to graph championships. While the results showed a lot of potential in showing trends, especially in the opportunity to overlap team successes on top of each other for city summary charts, the reference aspect of the poster was lost. Championships were shown through a darker color, but overall they were harder to identify.


Having come close on two efforts but convinced there had to be better options out there, nearly simultaneously two things happened. One, we realized that a bar chart for games above .500 was the perfect way to show trends of success. Two, we re-stumbled upon Edward Tufte’s excellent work in developing his sparklines. On his website, he has an excellent discussion of the graphs, which he describes as “intense, simple, word-sized graphics.”

Liftoff. After figuring out how to relate winning percentages in all the sports to each other through a little math, we had our answer. Combining sparklines with the icons and colors from earlier efforts provided the perfect way to illustrate trends and serve as a reference. While our finished graphs are not exactly the “word-sized” ones that Tufte defines, they are definitely an effective marriage of multiple layers of information in a compact space. We hope to apply this technique outside of the Cities of Champion graphic and will keep you updated about those developments.

City totals after formula input.

After deciding on the final formula for determining pro sports success, the next step was to input all the data. Not exactly an easy task (ok, actually a monumental one), but with a few organized spreadsheets, we managed to input winning percentages and postseason results and output totals for all the sports franchises cities. Here's how the city totals stacked up (green is football, red is baseball, purple is basketball, blue is hockey):



And in case anyone is interested in seeing what the spreadsheets look like, here they are. Obviously, a database backend would have made this all much quicker, but unfortunately I have a background in design not programming. Still, a bit of elbow grease and Excel still does the trick. I'm thinking about making these databases available on Google docs eventually so you all can play with the numbers, but for now, here's a preview:

Working out a formula.

When starting to answer the question of "Who is the true City of Champions?" it was important to find a way to equate different sports championships in different eras with each other. Because of the huge number of variables that would appear to make some championships worth more than others, the development of a formula was necessary to provide a way to level the playing field. The issues that needed to be resolved were as follows:

1. What leagues should be used?
The big four, sure. But what about the Canadian football league? What about the WNBA and the MLS?

2. What year should we start in?
The graphic should be about the modern era. All those championships the Montreal Canadiens and New York Yankees won when there were less than ten teams in the league shouldn't count, right? There wasn't even free agency back then.

3. What defines success?
What defines championship caliber success? Surely, winning it all. And being the runner-up. What else? Divisions? Playoffs?


After defining the problem, the next step would be answering these questions. After a lot of deliberation and careful analysis, these were the answers.

1. Use just the Big Four.
After taking a look at the stability of franchises, as well as attendance and revenue figures, the NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL easily distinguish themselves as being in a category all to their own. The most recent team to fold in these four leagues were the NHL's Cleveland Barons way back in 1976, a mark of consistency and success.

2. Start in 1967.
With the playing of the first NFL-AFL Championship game in 1967, for the first time, one legitimate champion was crowned in all four major sports. League expansion would follow immediately after, with all four leagues stretching out west. A year later, the NHL doubled it's 'Original Six' teams, and in 1977 the NBA swallowed up the ABA to solidify it's hold and expand it's size. We saw this as the start of the modern era in sports, with free agency, balanced play, and league parity.

3. Points for championships, playoffs, and winning seasons.
With the other considerations figured out, the biggest question was to decide on how to reward the points. Because winning championships in different leagues in different times should mean more, we developed a way of awarding the appropriate number of points for successful season. It should be noted that we did not award any points for divisional championships. The size, alignment, and strength of divisions has shifted so many times in the four leagues that there was no way to reconcile those differences in a way that was fair to all franchises. However, since divisional crowns have always been automatic qualification for the playoffs, we are comfortable letting the points won for playoff qualification replace the points not awarded for divisional crowns.

Championships.
Points for winning the Stanley Cup in 1966 and the Lombardi Trophy in 2008 can’t be awarded the same points when the NHL only had 6 teams then and the NFL now has 32. We award points for a championship equal to the number of teams in the league for that year. Being a runner up in a given year is awarded half points.

Playoff qualifiers.
Making the playoffs in the 1980 MLB where only four teams make the postseason should be weighted differently than the 2008 NBA and NHL where over half the teams make it. We award points for making the postaseason that are weighted depending on how many teams make the playoffs in that league in that year.

Winning seasons.
This was actually the easiest out of them all. In any league, in any season, a winning season is a winning season. Making it above .500 is rewarded the same points in any year.

Be sure to check back in the next few days as we show how we've taken this raw data and started to develop ways of illustrating it. In the meantime, check out our earlier posts about the development of this graphic:

Introduction

Cities of Champions references.

Before continuing to explain how we've developed our poster, it is important to point out that we are not the first guys to try and make sense of all the numbers. Following are sites that provide alternative formulas in an effort to crown a true city of champions.

Donovan's Championship Index | Nutty About Sports | ESPN Titletown

In addition, we'd like to give a shout out to the best sports stats sites on the web that have proved invaluable in the collection of our data.
Pro Football Reference | Baseball Reference
Basketball Reference | Hockey Reference

Finding a true champion.

The Cities of Champions graphic started with a very simple question—what city can claim the title of "City of Champions"? Being from Pittsburgh, where all collegiate and professional sports have had an era of great success (or in the case of the Steelers, pure dominance), I heard a lot of talk about Pittsburgh's claim to being the greatest sports city of all time. In bars, dormrooms, dens—just about every city can come up some evidence about why they can truly claim the crown of 'Titletown, U. S. A.'.

This graphic attempts to take a non-biased look at the question through the creation of a formula through which we take into account league and conference championships, playoff qualifications, and winning seasons. The formula levels the playing field so that every city can make it's fair and unbiased case simply by posting it's score.

Exactly what is that formula? Check back tomorrow for an explanation.