Tag: premise

The McFly Time Travel Sports Scheme

The McFly Time Travel Sports Scheme

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mcfly-time-travel-scheme

Every so often it’s a good idea to take a break from our more serious fare and showcase some infographics from the lighter side of town. Have you ever thought about what it would be like to do exactly what Biff Tannen did in the film Back the Future 2?  I suppose a better question is, if you had a time machine, would you grab a sports almanac and  go back in time to make yourself rich? Kind of an odd premise really. I mean, wouldn’t it be just as easy to go back in time without a sports book and make yourself rich by playing the stock market.  It would be less suspicious then placing a thousand sports bets in a month and getting all one thousand of them correct.  I have to imagine that if what happened in Back to the Future happened in reality, people would immediately assume  that games were being thrown.  They wouldn’t just throw their hands up and go, “This is amazing! This Biff Tannen guy is a genius! And he’s one of the most powerful people on the planet now! Yay!”

If I were to nitpick the plan presented in this graphic, I would point out that, in the movies, Doc Brown always had a stash of the money from the era that he and Marty were time-traveling to. So, the scenario presented in this graphic, where said person is punched by a 1950’s bookie for having what looks like play-money, would not occur if said person dipped into the Doc’s stash beforehand.  In all honesty, the get-rich-with-a-sports-almanac-plan works best the way that Biff did it in the movie.  You don’t go back in time with the book and try to get rich yourself.  You give the the book to a younger version of yourself and tell him to get rich. This plan is the most logical..uh…I think.

Just because this graphic is comical doesn’t make it immune from the grading portion.

Design: A

Great job by the artist. This graphic is well-made and holds your attention all the way through.

Content: A-

Funny moments, and overall, an outstanding concept.  Although I might be biased toward the content as an 80’s movie buff. I would have given it an A without the minus, but I was sort of waiting for that one hilarious punchline that was going to make me spit my prune juice out.  Never happened.

Graphic provided by NFLinjury.com

Reddit vs. Digg Infographic

Reddit vs. Digg Infographic

reddit-v-digg

A War of the Worlds is Upon Us! Digg vs. Reddit! In a steal cage! Michael Buffer is perched on top of a monster truck with a megaphone ready to announce tonight’s contenders. So, without, further ado..”Let’s get ready to Stummmble!” Stumbleupon? What are you doing here?! You showing up is like bringing a bat to a gun fight! Not to mention that you’re basically a neutral party in this scuffle. So, go on, get!

The above infographic tackles the issue of digg vs. reddit from several angles. In order to create this graphic, the company behind it, Rate Rush, had to spend two weeks collating information. They looked at every story to hit the digg homepage and every link to receive 100 points on reddit. They also noted precisely when the link became popular, as well as the user who submitted the link and the destination domain.

It’s interesting to note that there is large crossover in terms of which sites are popular on digg and which sites are popular on reddit. Imgur.com, the image hosting website, is very popular on both sites. Apparently, this site is the image hosting website of choice in this demographic. I would, in time, like to research why that is the case. What does it offer over say Tinypic.com or Photobucket? There must be something about this photo sharing site that has caused it to be popular among the geek demographic.

The graphic then goes on to show the most common words appearing in titles on the sites. There is large crossover here as well, namely with the words “BP” (this study was done during the height of news reports about the oil spill) and “Google.” Now, here’s a stat sure to ruffle some feathers and cause some fists to shake. Digg has long been thought of as a site that recycles content from reddit to form its frontpage. If you bought into this idea, this graphic won’t cause you to flip your opinion. All it will do is reaffirm your premise. The graphic presents empirical evidence that the reddit community does in fact find and post links to reddit before the digg community posts links to digg. Early alien gets the worm, ay.

Let’s move on now to the grading bit.

Infographics Scorecard

Design: A

The design of this graphic is top of the line. The images capture your attention and the graphs are unique and fascinating. When you create charts, it’s important that they don’t bog down.  The makers of this infographic have a clear understanding of how to make compelling pie charts and tables.

Content: A

This graphic’s creators get an A for effort, that’s for sure. They had to do more than drive to the library (like its 1994) and look up information. They had to do empirical research that spanned two weeks. That’s commendable.

Graphic supplied by RateRush.