Where in the world do the top 100 professional tennis players come from?
Men are from Spain, women are from Russia
After spending four full days on the grounds of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on the eve of the 2012 US Open tennis tournament, I decided to put together two simple maps showing where the world’s top professional tennis players come from. According to the August 20, 2012 rankings of the WTA and the ATP, the most female players in the top 100 come from Russia (10), the most men from Spain (12). The US has eight women and nine men in the top 100.
Below each map is a link to a table (Google Docs, no login required) showing the data used in that map.
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Table: Number of top 100 WTA players by country as of 8/20/2012.
Table: Number of top 100 ATP players by country as of 8/20/2012.
No women from Latin America, no men from China
[UPDATE 08/26/2012] I superimposed both maps to create a third, composite map of all 200 top professional tennis players (by country).
Table: Number of top 100 ATP and 100 WTA players by country as of 8/20/2012.
cool maps, like the projection better that Google Fusion Tables do on quick maps I did on similar topics (tho I did see Peters projection in their Blogger stats, so I asked their pundits to do so on GFT), what did you use for this?
Thanks! I got the world country boundary shapefile from GeoCommons, and I used it as-is. I considered playing with projections, but decided it would be overkill for this quick-and-dirty project.
If it came from GeoCommons, it’s unprojected, using a WGS84 datum.
Thank you, Bill! Yes, this is what QGIS thought when I threw the data in. I ended up using ArcGIS, however, because I couldn’t figure out how to do a join in QGIS. I found out later that I have to add the table as a vector layer (?!?) in order to join it to the feature layer.
Nice! Is there more data available with the maps. Heads per country, count per color?
Thank you! The maps need a legend, which I will add. Yes, there is more data. This started as a quick-and-dirty project, hence the lack of standard map components.
A legend? That puts you on the slippery slope to GIS. Turn back now while you still can!
Wise counsel. Plus, it will be difficult to differentiate between 12 shades of blue on screen. I think I will post the attribute tables themselves.
Below each map I have added a table (Google Docs, no login required) showing the data used in that map.
Even easier if you can live with Mercator is Google Fusion Tables, great for stats by countries on my blog, I haven’t found how to do the same on arcgis.com or giscloud.com yet (Blogger uses Peters for their stats, but hasn’t made it to GFT, tho I have asked the Mano Marks and Ed Parsons of the world LOL)
I did consider several technologies for this project, including Google Fusion Tables, which I have used in several other projects. Ultimately I decided on the quick-and-dirty QGIS-turned-ArcGIS approach. Mind you, this was initially meant as a visualization for personal consumption, thought of as my wife and I were driving back from the US Open. I never thought these maps would get such broad exposure.
On another plane, though, it could be that it was precisely the maps’ simplicity that attracted Sports Illustrated to link to them, and that SI wouldn’t have linked to a fancy, complex, interactive map. We may never know.
Your maps are great we all agree, Atanas. My only point is that GFT is not only dead easy for non-geeks to map tabular data by country (in cartoonish maps, agreed), but it allows a host of geo-analyses outside GIS – a crossover between spreadsheets and maps that allows links and aggregations as in my Olympic medal count etc. – in fact the Guardian’s data blog is what took me there first. [Addition: in GFT go:Visualize > Intnesity Map to see maps]
Andrew, I agree. My group has used FT in a number of projects, including one for the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Washington, DC. I am very happy with the technology.
I like your Olympic Medal Count maps.