Alright, let me tell you about my little Seahawks and Vikings players project. It was pretty straightforward, but you know, sometimes the simple stuff is the most fun.
So, it all started because I was bored one weekend, and I thought, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool to visualize the players from the Seahawks and Vikings?” I mean, I’m a big football fan, and I figured it would be a good way to brush up on my data handling skills too.
First things first, I needed data. I went scavenging online, searching for a reliable source of player information. I stumbled upon a few sports websites that had rosters listed. I ended up using some copy-pasting, and cleaning it up.
Data Cleaning: My Least Favorite Part
Oh man, cleaning the data was a pain. The formatting was all over the place. Some names were in all caps, some were lowercase, and there were weird characters sprinkled throughout. I spent a good hour just standardizing everything. I ended up using a simple find and replace in a text editor. Nothing fancy, but it got the job done.
Next, I had to decide how to structure the data. I went with a basic CSV file. Each row represented a player, and the columns included things like name, position, height, weight, and jersey number. I also added a column for the team they played for (Seahawks or Vikings, obviously). I used a text editor to make it.
Okay, data prepped, time for the fun part! I wanted to create a simple visualization. Nothing too crazy, just something that would let me see the distribution of players by position and maybe compare the height and weight of players on each team.
I used some Python to do this. I started by importing the CSV file using Python’s csv library. Super simple:
- Import the csv library
- Open the csv file
- Read it into a list of dictionaries
Then, I used some conditional statements to separate the Seahawks players from the Vikings players. I created two lists, one for each team.
The Visuals
For the actual visualization, I kept it simple. I made a bar chart showing the number of players at each position for both teams. Then I made scatter plots showing their height and weight comparing the two teams.
The Result
In the end, it wasn’t anything groundbreaking, but it was a fun little project. I got to practice my data cleaning and visualization skills, and I learned a bit more about the players on the Seahawks and Vikings. Plus, it was a good way to kill a boring weekend!
It’s nothing crazy, but it was a fun little project. Definitely something I might expand on later, maybe adding more data or creating more complex visualizations.
