You want graphs? On Thanksgiving? Shouldn’t you be eating and or sleeping?
Fine. You want graphs, you’ll get graphs.
Graphs We Love – ESPN’s Stats & Info Twitter
If you’re a fan of both sports and graphs, then we recommend that you follow ESPN’s Stats and Info Twitter account, @ESPNStatsInfo. It’s a good source of timely sports anecdotes and they’ll share out some interesting graphs, including baseball heatmaps.
If you love sports and graphs, we think they’re worth a follow.
Most Populous City By State
The United States has a lot of people in it. However, we wanted to take a look at what was the most populous city within each state, and graph it out.
We took a look only at incorporated cities (as opposed to metropolitan areas) and found some interesting results, especially towards the bottom.
Familiar cities like Boise (ID) and Salt Lake City (UT) are outside the top 100, while cities like Portland (ME) and Cheyenne (WV) aren’t even in the top 500. Burlington, the most populous city in VT, didn’t even crack the top 1000.
Data was compiled from the Census (via Wikipedia 1 2) for cities with population over 100,000 and the World Gazetteer for the remaining Top 1000 cities.
Here’s a text file of the data.
We think taking a look at this in a bar chart gives real perspective on the differences from state-to-state.
GraphLink: Invisible Bread
Which Word Should I Play?
You are playing Scrabble. Or maybe, because we live in the future, you are playing Words With Friends on a supercomputer that fits in your palm. You have the following tiles: CMOHVER. A quick glance sees that you can play COVER for 10 points. Oh wait, you can also play MOVER (10 points) or even HOVER (11 points). Assuming there are no delightful puns or perhaps a clever response to the word your opponent just played, all three of these plays are basically the same. So which should you play? Does it even make a difference? And if it does make a difference, could a graph possibly help you here?
Geotagging Visualization of Philadelphia
Geospatial visualization is a fascinating field and we plan on covering it more here on GraphGraph. In my other moonlighting gig, I write for Geekadelphia, my first post was on Geotagging Philadelphia, based on the “Locals and Tourists” project that Eric Fischer put together.
I’m linking to it because I think Eric’s project is a fantastic example of real insight from mashing data with maps. I analyzed Philadelphia because it’s my home, so I encourage you to look at your city and see what information you can learn about where you live.
Top 10 Most Popular Cities in North America
Can you name the ten most populous cities in North America?
I tried and I know that I didn’t get them all. Specifically, I missed a few cities of our neighbors to the south in Mexico and the north in Canada, which probably speaks to my poor knowledge of geography more than anything else.
Here is the list (taken from Wikipedia), compiled based on the most recent census data from each county:
| Rank | Country | City | Population | Census Year |
| 1 | Mexico | Mexico City | 8,873,017 | 2010 |
| 2 | USA | New York City | 8,175,133 | 2010 |
| 3 | USA | Los Angeles | 3,792,621 | 2010 |
| 4 | USA | Chicago | 2,695,598 | 2010 |
| 5 | Canada | Toronto | 2,503,281 | 2006 |
| 6 | USA | Houston | 2,100,017 | 2010 |
| 7 | Canada | Montréal | 1,854,442 | 2006 |
| 8 | Mexico | Tijuana | 1,784,034 | 2009 |
| 9 | Mexico | Ecatepec de Morelos | 1,658,806 | 2010 |
| 10 | USA | Philadelphia | 1,556,396 | 2010 |
It’s nice to have them all in a list, but if we graph this data we can hopefully get some additional value from this information.
Continue reading “Top 10 Most Popular Cities in North America”
My Halloween Candy In Graphs
Halloween usually means candy. Less commonly, Halloween means making geeky graphs on the distribution of candy you give out to Trick-or-Treaters.
This is the first Halloween at my new house, so we didn’t know what to expect. So, why not graph out everything?
The Stats
- 419 Treats, 379 Treats taken by Trick-or-Treaters
- 189 Trick-or-Treaters
- 2 Hours of Trick-or-Treating
- 2.01 Treats taken per Trick-or-Treater
Total Candy
Yes, I counted all the candy. Geekier still, I graphed the starting percentages and ending percentages.
What does it all mean? Are sugary candies less popular in my neighborhood than straight-up chocolate?
NFL Championships Per Year
The Green Bay Packers are the winningest NFL franchise. If you watched one minute of Super Bowl coverage last year, you would have been told that. 10 times. But they are also one of the oldest teams in the NFL, founded in 1921. They were winning championships before most of the teams today existed, so their accomplishments aren’t all that great, right? Yes, they won a lot, but at what rate were they winning? How would they stack up against the rest of the league in terms of championships per year? As it turns out, quite well.
Using wikipedia as a source, a table was created listing every current NFL team. Years of eligibility are based on the first year the team is eligible to win the Super Bowl. Before the Super Bowl era, this is based on the first year the team is eligible for the NFL championship. Thus, no AFL championships are included, and NFL championships during 1966-1970 are not included. No AAFC championships are included.* Teams who have never won an NFL championship are listed in order from youngest to oldest.
As a result, teams such as the New England Patriots and their three titles are ranked higher than the Washington Redskins and their five, due to Washington’s 34 more years of eligibility. Both the fledgling Baltimore Ravens and the long established Oakland Raiders are both winning Super Bowls at a rate of .067 per year. The aforementioned Packers are winning ~.05 more championships a year than the next closest team, their nearby rivals in Chicago.
Terribly useful? Perhaps not. But it is an interesting way to look at and define “success.”
* Let it go, Cleveland. It was a B-league and you know it.
Most Valuable Cities in “Ticket To Ride”
Update 2016-08-14: This article was translated to Japanese by the team at Big Cats Game Blog.
Ticket To Ride is a great board game where the premise is that you’re a railroad baron at the start of the 20th Century. Along the way you collect “Destination Tickets” and you need to need to connect up two specific cities to score extra points.
Not all cities are created equal, however. Some cities are represented on “Destination Tickets” more frequently, and some cities only have a few pathways into and out of the city.
We calculated the Most Valuable Cities in Ticket To Ride through a simple formula. Add up the number of points that you get with a given city, and divide it by the number of paths connecting up that city.
For example, New York City has 57 points associated with it, but there are four paths into the city in a 2 or 3 player game, and seven paths in a 4 or 5 player game. Compare that to Miami, which is worth 50 points but only has three paths regardless of how many people are playing. This make Miami and much more “valuable” city to connect up with.
Essentially, the more “valuable” a city, the sooner you need to establish a train line into it. If not, you run the risk of being cut off from any current points you have in your hand, and any future bonus points from already having a connection there.
We’ve crunched the numbers for the US Map and for all four versions of the game (Original, 1910, Big Cities, and Mega Game) and produced a PDF for your reference to use while you’re playing.
“Ticket To Ride” Most Valuable Cities downloadable PDF
And since we’re a site all about graphs, we offer some key information in graph form.