Empire 81

Over the past one year I’ve captured the Empire State Building in different moods. Today as ESB celebrates it’s 81st birthday, I put forth a small piece as a token of love and respect for this great structure.

Tennis, Trend and Tableau

Novak Djokovic recently won the Tennis US Open (Sept 2011), and completed the year with 3 of 4 grand slams this year. He has upset the reigning Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal in previous championships as well.

I decided to take a visual look at how Djokovic is faring against these two Tennis icons. Looks like pretty well!

Using Tableau software  and relying heavily on data from Wikipedia, I came up with this viz. The image below is a static one, you can view the interactive viz by clicking here.

Viz created using Tableau. Click to enlarge or click on link above

This viz contains two charts – the simpler one on the right gives total number of wins by the corresponding player over the past 9 years. For example, Rafael Nadal has won the French Open 6 times, compared to Federer’s 1 and Djokovic’s 0.

The chart on the left speaks more of the performance – which is based on the progress of the player in a particular championship.

The circles represent at what stage in the championship the player was knocked out. Higher the better – 5 represents Winner. For example, in the year 2005, in the US Open, Federer won (represented by the Red circle).

The trend lines take into account the performance over the past 9 years – from 2003 to 2011.

The trend lines give an interesting picture.  Consider the Wimbledon band. Even thought Federer is way ahead than the other two in terms of  number of Wimbledon wins, he has not been performing well in the past 2 years – and as a result, his trend line is decreasing. On the other hand, you can see a consistent rise in Djokovic’s Wimbledon games. (If you see the actual interactive viz, you can highlight the chart for one player at a time).

Thus, while Federer has not given up on the other three trends, he is not looking good on the Wimbledon front. Nadal remains the king of clay, as he dominates the French Open. Djokovic, the relatively new kid on the block, seems to be rising with each game.

So, whom will you bet on in next year’s Grand Slam season?