Earl Pickerin on LinkedIn: Interesting! (2024)

Telling a story with data:The grass on Center Court at Wimbledon over the decades shows a change in the wear patterns. This transformation is not the result of new, more resilient turf or grounds keeping technologies, but due to changing racket technology.In the era of wooden rackets, the heavy weight of the racket resulted in a "serve and volley" game. Given the impossibility of finishing a point from the back of the court, players resorted to volleying to win points at the net. With the shift from wooden rackets to modern materials like carbon fiber and graphite, the game moved towards powerful baseline play. Today's players are taller, hit hard from both sides, serve aggressively, and finish points predominantly from the back of the court.

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In fact, my absolute favorite sport has changed fundamentally. I started playing tennis at the end of 1983, back then with an Adidas wooden racket (gut side).You practically only relied on service and net play. A powerful baseline stroke was mainly there to prepare the attack. The return was not really a training point at the end of the eighties (my coaches always said: "Play a long ball back if possible"). It wasn't so bad because the game was still so slow compared to today. You still positioned yourself very sideways for the shot and then simply tapped forward with sideways steps back to the middle.My idols were mainly Edberg, Sampras and Noah. But to be honest, after Sampras and Agassi, the three greats Federer, Nadal & Djokovic effectively changed the sport fundamentally once again, or still do to some extent today. Of course, the equipment (rackets, balls, etc.) has had a massive impact on changing the game. But this speed, precision, physical exertion, etc. over best of 5 sets.... simply unbelievable. Today, the return is central to the structure of the game. Of all the important shots from 1983, only the serve remains - also from the baseline. So I can only confirm these pictures. What will the court look like in 2050?My love of tennis, like the game itself, has only grown and will never end...

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A fascinating engineering story. Thinking about it, you see it everywhere. Small changes to material and design technology have giant impacts on how we use equipment. Think cars. In the 70's rust was a big topic and so was rust prevention. Yes pistons, cylinders, and crankshaft bearing did wear out. 100,000 miles was a lot. Today we did stop thinking about it. ACTech GmbH was part of many engine developments in the last 30 years and the engine castings of today are a different game of what we did in the 90' .Structural parts for the BIW we did in the 90's too. But the parts where way smaller and had way less complexity than what we see today. Something like the Tesla Gigacastings would have been pretty unthinkable back than. The result of the material and engineering advances? Cars today live a lot longer, are safer, and easier to drive. #design #innovation #engineering

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And that's how storytelling is supposed to be...simple, insightful and relevant

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As with debugging an issue, the most obvious reason is not always the underlying cause.

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Talk about long term statistic data accumulation….

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Great discussion here of data visualization, the need for expert interpretation and of course, tennis.

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Effective data storytelling involves integrating domain knowledge with data finding to reveal meaningful patterns and insights!

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Very insightful! When a visual with some data tells a story.

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This, to me, sheds light on two critical points: 1. The importance of investing in reliable data. 2. The context in which data is interpreted; To extract useful information from raw data, we need in-depth knowledge of data science and the specific subject related to the data. In our recent paper, "A call for a fundamental shift from model-centric to data-centric approaches in hydroinformatics," Prof. Dragan Savic FREng, Ahmad Ferdowsi, and I explored this in the context of water engineering and hydroinformatics.Link: https://lnkd.in/g9Caj4K4#CambridgePrisms#hydroinformatics#water

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