PDI was interested in seeing if Texas does better or worse in "exciting" games based off the Excitement Index Classification
Excitement Index is a measure of how exciting a game was to watch on a scale of 1-10. It accomplishes this by measuring swings in win probability throughout the course of the game. The more extreme swings between both teams, the higher the excitement index will be.
Boring = 1-3
Mild = 4-6
Exciting = 7-10
Insights Derived:
By looking at games from 2021 through week 6 of 2023, we gathered a sample size of 30 games to analyze. We then decided to assign the Excitement Index Classification (EIC) to three groups as either a Boring, Mild, or Exciting game.
As seen in the graph above, Texas played in 15 total Boring games and won 12 of those 15, showing that they excel in those Boring games. We can also see that they played in 10 exciting games and lost 8 of those 10, showing they excel in LOSING Exciting games.
It looks like just by simply looking at the last 2.5 years of games, when Texas is playing in a high intensity, action packed games, they seem to choke away the win. Now what should we do with this information? We see two ways to capitalize off this information:
Go make fun of your Texas friends and tell them that they better hope for more Boring games
An interesting opportunity for you sports bettors out there, next time you are watching a Texas game and the win probability is swinging back and forth, take that phone out and lay next month's rent payment on the opponents money line.
Behind the Scenes:
The other part of our blog is actually teaching the technical aspects of how the visualization was made. We have attached the data source used below the visualization so that you can download and attempt to recreate or even make your own and show us what insights you derived.
Step 1: Determining if a game was a Texas win or loss
To determine if a game was a Texas win or loss we first had to point Tableau to which score (home or away points) was related to Texas:
IF [Home Team] = 'Texas' THEN [Home Points] ELSE [Away Points] END
We named this calculation "Texas Points" and then we created our "Texas Win/Loss" calculation to come to a conclusion if it was a Texas win or loss:
IF [Texas Points] > [Non Texas Points] THEN 'WIN' ELSE 'LOSS' END
Step 2: Counting the amount of wins and losses
The next step was to determine the amount of wins and losses and we created the following "Texas Wins" and "Texas Losses" calculations:
IF [Texas Win/Loss] = 'WIN' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END
IF [Texas Win/Loss] = 'LOSS' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END
Step 3: Creating the EIC Classifications
The last calculation to create was to classify the EIC values into our three groups, Boring, Mild, and Exciting:
IF [Excitement Index] >= 7 AND [Excitement Index] <= 10 THEN "Exciting"
ELSEIF [Excitement Index] >= 4 AND [Excitement Index] <= 6 THEN "Mild"
ELSE "Boring"
END
Step 4: Creating the Dashboard
Finally, we are ready to create the dashboard. We drag Texas Wins and Texas Losses to the rows and make a dual axis chart, then we drag our EIC calculation to the columns.
The next step is we changed the Marks card to "shape" and assigned the Jordan crying face to the Texas Losses marks card and the Longhorn logo to the Texas Wins marks card.
We then put this sheet in our dashboard, made the background a burnt orange and added our text. Now you have a Texas dashboard!
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