The astute reader will recognize the title of this post as a play on Edward Tufte’s book of a similar name.  While Tufte’s work focuses on turning quantitative data into an easily consumable format that has a clear message, it’s also important to do so with qualitative data.  Qualitative data can often be the “how” or “why” to go along with the “what” provided by quantitative data.

The New York Times recently did an excellent job illustrating the qualitative aspects of Jeremy Lin’s performances.  The sports media has done a great job covering what Jeremy Lin has done, but this New York Times piece goes into how Lin is accomplishing what he has and why he is a good point guard, all with 3 simple animations.  It reminded me a lot of this video which calls for exactly this type of analysis in soccer.  The closest I’ve found are the brilliant videos that AllasFCB2 puts together.