Alright, so I figured I’d share my deep dive into Steelers playoff games. It was a real journey, let me tell you.
First, I started by just Googling “Steelers playoff history.” Pretty basic, right? Landed on a bunch of sites, Wikipedia being the first stop, of course. I started skimming through all the years, trying to get a sense of their overall record, you know?
Then, things got a little more organized. I decided I wanted to see the results in a more digestible format. So, I copied the data from Wikipedia (yeah, I know, not the best source, but it’s a starting point) and pasted it into a Google Sheet.
Next up, data cleaning. Oh man, this was a mess. Dates formatted all sorts of ways, opponents listed differently sometimes… It was a real pain. I used the “Find and Replace” feature in Sheets like crazy, getting everything consistent. Standardized all the team names, cleaned up the dates, all that jazz.
With the data cleaned, I started doing some calculations. Simple stuff, really. Calculating win percentages, counting the number of Super Bowl appearances, things like that. I used some basic formulas in Sheets, nothing too fancy.
After that, I wanted to visualize the data. I messed around with some charts and graphs in Google Sheets. A simple bar graph showing wins vs. losses, a line graph showing their playoff appearances over time. Nothing groundbreaking, but it helped me see the trends.
Then I thought, “Hey, why not make this interactive?” So, I exported the data from Google Sheets as a CSV file and imported it into Tableau Public (it’s free, which is always a plus).
Tableau was where things got fun. I could create dashboards, add filters, and really explore the data in different ways. I made a dashboard that showed their playoff record against each opponent, another one that showed their performance under different coaches. It took some fiddling around to get the visualizations looking the way I wanted, but it was worth it.
One thing I really wanted to see was how their performance changed over different eras. So, I created a calculated field in Tableau to group the games by decade. Then I could see their win percentage in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and so on. That was pretty interesting.
Finally, I published my Tableau dashboard to Tableau Public so I could share it. It’s not perfect, but it’s a decent overview of the Steelers’ playoff history. I even added some annotations to highlight key moments and statistics.
All in all, it was a fun little project. I learned a lot about the Steelers’ playoff history, and I got to practice my data analysis and visualization skills. Plus, now I can bore my friends with Steelers trivia at the next game. Win-win!
