Miss America 2019

July 2019

I stumbled across this dataset about Miss America title holders by chance and it seemed like a good excuse to push a viz that's "on brand", shareable and has a bit of glam.

The story also has a little depth.

Nia Franklin's crowning as Miss America in 2019 was predictable and revolutionary at the same time. Based on previous results she looked like a statistical shoe-in: She's from the right state, had the right talent and fitted the right age bracket...

Conversely Miss America is an event trying to stay relevant, which made her win even more significant. Beauty pageants have a problematic image through a 21st century lens so to pick a winner who is non-white, older and genuinely talented represents a break from the past.

The days of swim suits and questionable talent appear to be fading? Thankfully.

Back to the viz, this was mostly an exercise in creating a design that followed someone else's style guide. Palette's and feel are lifted straight from the Miss America website.

This was also the first time I tried to create a cross-device visualisation on Tableau Public. It responds pretty well on mobile as well as deskop, although I can't deny it wasn't a fiddly experience.

My main takeaway tip for making this performant on Tableau Public was hiding sheets and unused fields before pressing the publish button. (I have no empirical truth on this, but it seems faster.)

The resulting page is a neat viz, with very obvious insight that's easy to access.

Making this visualisation

Data source: Data.World

Tool: Tableau Public (interactive)