Click the Original, Code and Reconstruction tabs to read about the issues and how they were fixed.

Original


Source: Reddit - u/LongTermMetabolite (2020).


Objective

The objective of the data visualisation is to portray which players of the Chicago Bulls earned how much throughout each season during the 1990-1998 period. The visualisation is aimed at the casual basketball fan, as well as the viewers of the recently released 10-part documentary “The Last Dance”, which looked deeply into the 1990’s Chicago Bulls basketball team.

The visualisation chosen had the following three main issues:

  • The method chosen makes the visualisation complex and hard to follow. The stacked bar chart combined with the transitions between years also makes it hard to analyse and compare the different players.
  • Using so many colours, especially when looking at the players who earned little, is both irrelevant and makes the visualisation difficult to view. Combining all these little-known players into one allows for greater comparison to the higher-paid, more important players.
  • The visualisation has some objectivity issues. It relies on background knowledge that some of the audience may not know. If we include more information like how well a player performed during each season, it will enhance the viewer’s knowledge and understanding of the importance of each player on these Chicago Bulls teams.

Reference

Code

The following code was used to fix the issues identified in the original.

library(dplyr)
library(rmarkdown)
library(ggplot2)
library(magrittr)
library(scales)
library(grid)
library(readxl)
AxPSalary <- read_excel("/Users/codyshipp/Desktop/AxPSalary.xlsx")
View(AxPSalary)

AxPSalary$Player_l = factor(AxPSalary$Player, levels = c('Michael Jordan', 'Scottie Pippen', 'Horace Grant',
                                                     'BJ Armstrong', 'Steve Kerr', 'Toni Kukoč',
                                                     'Dennis Rodman', 'Other Players'))
p1 <- ggplot() + geom_line(data = AxPSalary, aes(x = Year, y = Value, color = Type)) +
  geom_point(data = AxPSalary, aes(x = Year, y = Value, color = Type)) +
  scale_color_manual(values = c("black", "red"), name = "Salary Type") +
  
  facet_grid(Player_l ~., scales = "free_y", labeller = label_value) + 
  labs(title = "Chicago Bulls Player Salary vs Salary Based on Performance 1991-1998", y = "Salary") +
  scale_x_continuous(n.breaks = 8) + coord_cartesian(xlim = c(NA,NA)) +
  scale_y_continuous(labels = unit_format(unit = "M", scale = 1e-6)) + 
  theme(panel.spacing.y = unit(1,"lines"), strip.text.y = element_text(size = 7), 
        plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5))

Data Reference

  • 1990-91 Chicago Bulls Roster and Stats, Basketball Reference, viewed 7th May 2020, https://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/CHI/1991.html. (For other years, please click the link and press “Next Season” until the required season is on show. All data was collated from Basketball Reference.)

Reconstruction

The following plot fixes the main issues in the original.