Friday, July 27, 2012

Friday Fun Links

This is one of the coolest uses of graphic/animated data I've seen....it compares past Olympians to each other to show what the events would have looked like if the gold medalists from different years had competed against each other.  Swimming seems to have gained the most over the years, while the long jump seems more impervious to time.

This infographic looks innocuous, until you look at the upper right hand corner.  Cats have 72 hour days? (h/t junkcharts)

This is a useful page if you ever wanted to know what superhero your font of choice would be.  The only downside....no comic sans (asshole).

XKCD.com added a new page where he answers hypothetical questions with physics.  This weeks is "what would a mole of moles look like?"  Haven't we all wondered that at some point?

3 comments:

  1. I can't tell what the pie-chart next to the "18 hours of sleep" should be.

    But you're right, it is really confusing.

    But the Olympic-sports chart is amazing.

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  2. I will look in more detail, but if you look at the shoes and the track that Jesse Owens was working from, the expected improvement is darn close to the current pace. I would expect that is also true for 1896, though the smaller pool of athletes would also be a factor.

    Swimmers work much, much harder now.

    Despite the lack of proof, to my mind every article about Jamaican sprinters that does not mention that their steroid testing is far murkier than their competitors is missing the boat. As with the ages of Chinese gymnasts, the visual evidence and the credible doubt is so strong that I simply do not believe them, whether they can get through the Olympic filters or not.

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    Replies
    1. I was most interested in the lack of improvement in the long jump....is that really completely impervious to technology and training advances?

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