Olympic Marathon Data Visualization
For the visualizations, I considered how my method of displaying the data could enhance each story. For example, in the visualization comparing outcomes for men’s marathon entrants, I broke the outcomes up by both category and year, showing trends in each outcome over time while also allowing for comparison between categories within each year. Or in my visualization comparing Olympic-level performances with more “average” marathon performances, I took inspiration from the novel Around the World in Eighty Days, using an unconventional calendar format to give viewers a more relatable frame of reference.
The marathon has been an event at the Olympics since the games’ inception in 1896, providing 128 years of opportunity for ever greater feats of endurance as well as moments too bizarre to have been made up. In my poster design about the Olympic marathon for a data visualization course, I chose data that I could use to tell the story of the marathon’s long history, how the event has changed over time, and how elite the athletes’ performances are. I also considered how I could write the copy to enhance the story of the data, choosing a playful tone in the spirit of the games and using it to provide the necessary background to understand the visualizations as well as highlighting trends in the data or fun facts.