Okay, here’s my take on sharing my experiences, focusing on a practical project with the golfer Stacy Lewis, kinda like a digital sports bio-thing.
Alright folks, today I’m gonna walk you through something I cooked up recently. It all started when I was messing around, trying to learn more about data visualization and sports stats. I stumbled upon Stacy Lewis’s career stats, and I thought, “Hey, this would be a cool project to visualize!” So, I dove right in.
First things first, I scraped all the data I could find on Stacy Lewis. I found a bunch of stuff on the LPGA website, a few golf stats sites, and even some news articles. It was kinda messy, different formats, missing bits here and there. It was like piecing together a puzzle.
Then came the fun part – cleaning the data. Ugh, this took way longer than I thought. I had to deal with inconsistencies in how names were written, dates were formatted, and even the stats themselves. I used Python with Pandas, which helped a ton. I had to write custom functions to parse different date formats and handle missing values. It was a real pain, but I got there eventually.
Next up, I organized the data. I structured it into a few key tables: one for tournaments, one for yearly stats, and another for awards/achievements. I used a relational database (SQLite, just for simplicity) to keep everything tidy. Figuring out the right schema took a bit of thinking, but it made querying the data later on way easier.
Now, for the actual visualization. I wanted something interactive and informative. I decided to use JavaScript with *. I started with a simple line chart showing her yearly scoring average over time. Then, I added a bar chart displaying her number of wins per year. I played around with different chart types, like scatter plots to show her performance in major tournaments, but the line and bar charts seemed to tell the story the best.
To make it more engaging, I added tooltips that popped up when you hovered over a data point, showing more details about that specific event or year. I also included filters so you could focus on specific periods of her career or particular types of tournaments.
Once the visualization was working, I focused on making it look good. I chose a color palette that was easy on the eyes and consistent with the LPGA’s branding. I also added some text to provide context and highlight key moments in her career. It’s all about making it user-friendly.
The whole process took me a few weeks of on-and-off work. There were definitely moments where I got stuck, especially when dealing with *. But I just kept at it, Googling like crazy, and eventually, I got it working. It’s not perfect, but it’s a cool little project that I’m proud of. It showcases Stacy Lewis’s impressive career and lets you explore her stats in a fun, interactive way.
In the end, I learned a lot about data scraping, cleaning, and visualization. And it was also a great way to appreciate the hard work and dedication of a top-level athlete like Stacy Lewis. I think I might tackle another golfer next. Who knows?
