The Associated Press captures the performance well:
Tiger Woods arrived at Augusta National as a favorite to win his fifth green jacket. Instead, he left with his worst score as a pro.
This chart, made with data from the Augusta Chronicle, shows his four-round average scores at the Masters since he turned pro in 1997. This year was the highest (which, in golf, if a bad thing):
It should be noted that weather conditions vary each year. Tiger finished second in 2007 when low temperatures and wind made scoring difficult, for example. Still, it’s a general indicator of performance. Another measure is the leader board position: Tiger finished 41st this year, by far his worst effort.
Tiger Woods struggled off the tee yesterday at the Masters, a key reason he’s tied for 29th in a tournament in which many picked him as the favorite.
Tiger’s driving accuracy has also contributed to the general decline in his performance since its peak in 2000. He’s looked better this season, though, leading to his first PGA Tour win since 2009 two weeks ago.
This chart shows his driving accuracy over time, according to tour statistics:
Here’s how Woods’ performance yesterday compares to his career — and the rest of the field at the Masters:
See driving accuracy for all players on tour since 1980.
PREVIOUSLY:
Nice before/after map and story from USA Today about how suburban growth has slowed:
Five years ago, millions of Americans were streaming to new homes on the fringes of metropolitan areas. Then housing prices collapsed and the Great Recession slowed growth to levels not seen since the Great Depression in the 1930s. Growth remained slow last year, and largely confined to counties at the center of metropolitan areas. Maps show population gain or loss in 2006 and 2011, based on new Census Bureau estimates.
Anyone have thoughts about the colors? Though muted, they could remind readers of politics maps.
From The Washington Post:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has a fascinating new report out that compares consumer budgets in the United States, Canada, Britain and Japan. As the graph below shows, there’s a huge amount of variation in what people in each country are spending their money on:
Does Washington, D.C., have more cops than other cities? That’s the question I asked myself the other day after watching a patrol car drive down our quiet, residential street. I see patrol cars everywhere — much more often than I did previous cities like Houston and Austin.
There’s a reason: Among the top 50 most-populous local governments, D.C. simply has more police officers per resident, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, which surveyed large police forces a few years ago. The city has about 670 cops per 100,000 residents, well ahead of Chicago, which was second with about 472 per 100,000. Houston had about 220, and Dallas had about 260.
Of course, D.C. is the capitol and diplomatic center of the country, and it’s densely populated with pockets of high crime and poverty. So a large officer to resident rate is understandable. But it’s a bit surprising how much D.C.’s ratio eclipses that of other major cities.
This chart shows the cities among the top 50 that have the highest per-resident officer ratio:
Here are the data for all 50 cities plotted on a map made with TileMill. Larger symbols represent higher numbers of officers per 100,000 residents:
See larger, interactive version
Data source: U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics
Hint.fm visualizes surface wind from the National Digital Forecast Database:
View larger, live version and archive.
H/T @blettenberger
PGA Tour players hit the ball 30 years farther off the tee now than they did three decades ago, according to the tour’s statistics. That’s most likely because their equipment, fitness and coaching have improved dramatically over that time.
These charts show a year-by-year average of all 980 players active on the tour since 1980, as well as the trend for Scott Verplank and Phil Mickelson individually.
(See larger interactive versions).
Data Source: PGA Tour
Inspired by Tiger Woods’ victory on Sunday, I decided to chart some basic statistics from his 17-year PGA Tour career, including this one on how often he finished in the top 10 at tournaments:
The PGA site has tons of year-by-year data for each PGA tour player since 1980, including every imaginable question (putting, driving, greens in regulation, and many more). So this is just the minimum of what’s possible with golf statistics.
Anything you’d like to see?
PREVIOUSLY:
The New York Times has posted a sad and troubling story about the horse racing industry:
[A]n investigation by The New York Times has found that industry practices continue to put animal and rider at risk. A computer analysis of data from more than 150,000 races, along with injury reports, drug test results and interviews, shows an industry still mired in a culture of drugs and lax regulation and a fatal breakdown rate that remains far worse than in most of the world.
The story has a chart and map visualizing the rate of incidents at each track, showing how it varies by state:
Following Nathan Yau’s excellent tutorial for creating heat maps with time series data (he used vehicle accidents by day for a year), I visualized 3,559 of my tweets back to March 2009.
These maps, created with a modified R script from the tutorial, show how often I sent tweets (both personal and RT), with darker shades representing more activity. It’s fun to go back to the dark days and recall what sparked flurries of tweets:
