About SportVis
SportVis will try to capture and publicize use of information visualization (infovis) with sports statistical data. More importantly, we will help push further integration of sports and infovis.
Major American sports generate substantial amounts of numerical data that lend themselves to statistical analysis. Primarily through the work of Bill James and the availability of data on the Internet, advanced baseball statistical analysis (typically called Sabermetrics) has gained substantial traction. More recently, other sports, including basketball (e.g., Dean Oliver, Ken Pomeroy) and professional football (e.g., Football Outsiders) have received analytical treatment. However, there is still a resistance among the general sports fan to embrace this new lens through which to view the game.
Some of this may be attributed to the often unsophisticated presentation of complex information, something to which information visualization is particularly suited. Unfortunately, there has been surprisingly little substantial application of information visualization to sports statistics. Presentations of general information visualization systems (e.g., Spotfire) and techniques (e.g., treemaps) frequently use sports data as examples. There is a dearth of tools (the visualization of a tennis match is one notable exception) to help users with tasks specific to analyzing sports. Such tools could not only enhance the enjoyment of fans, but also assist media coverage and team officials decision making.
More to come soon...