The Greatest Tweet
I am not a big social media guy. I do have a Facebook page, but it is under a pen name. I never visit it and don’t believe I have ever posted on it. I don’t feel social media is necessary for me; if I have anything to say, I can speak up here. Of course, this blog is also written under a pen name. I guess the real version of me has very little to say at all.
So, how did I come across a tweet? This one made national news, and I instantly realized why. When the Twitter platform was conceived, the creators could never have imagined something so wonderful and insightful delivered through their code. And yet, here we are. I admit I am a novice and have no Twitter experience, but I can say with certain authority that what follows is the greatest tweet in history. Let me slightly amend that; this is the most fabulous tweet possible. People who tweet in the future can only hope for second place when the history of great tweets is written. Behold…
This image was shared the other day. The left-hand side shows 13 metrics that the team uses to evaluate players. In the lower right, they tell us that the team assigns each player a score from 0 – 100 based on their analysis. The revolutionary aspect of this visualization is the “analytics cylinder,” complete with the Bears’ logo. I have been studying analytics and data visualization for decades, and honestly, this is the greatest thing I have ever seen.
Think about this, did the Bears risk giving away any proprietary information relating to their analytical process? If anything, the Analytics Cylinder (yes, that deserves to be capitalized) creates more mystery. What exactly are they doing? Are they using Python, SQL, and R, or alien technology from Area 51 in concert with quantum computers to pick the most promising players for their team? I don’t know, but I am interested. Before I saw the tweet, I didn’t care one bit about how the Bears went about their data analytics. Now, I assure you, I can’t get enough. I might set up an account just so I can follow them. Who knows, maybe a Database Rhombus is next.
