Want to win BIG using Horse Analytics?

Introduction

I joined the SAC Analytics Designer Hackathon contest to have a fun way to learn the tool. I had some data from the horse track and decided to use that in the contest. This blog post describe the dashboard I created and the functionality.

Application Description

Which insight can SAP Analytics designer do with a data sett that contain data for 462,067 race participation’s from 2005 to 20017, the answer is : A LOT !

I created a dashboard that will visualize all the data, so it’s possible to get the insight you need to bet on horse racing.

SAP Analytics designer gives me the freedom to present the data in a way that it gives me valuable information. The tool is easy to use but it was new to me, and I used some time to figure out the functionality and the possibility’s in the cloud-based tool.

Main dashboard

Here is the main dashboard, I have described the different functionality in the following Chapters.

The following sections describe the functionality that I have used in the dashboard

Functionality 1 – Dropdown filter with “all” selection

You can select a specific track to show insight only for that specific track. Creating a drop-down was easy, but is was not easy to unselect all tracks. It needed to add an extra value called: ALL to be able to see data from all the tracks, after I have chosen a specific track.

Functionality 2 – Date filter

SAP Analytics designer have good build in support to filter on dates, but I needed to see data across years. Maybe a start position is bad in the wintertime, so I need to see the data for a give month across years. I needed to create two sliders to set the desired year range and the month I like to see data from.

Functionality 3– Best start Track

I have created some calculated measures that shows the win percent’s on the different start tracks. This numbers are filtered when you choose the track from the menu bar.

Functionality 4– Custom chart with transparent image.

I wanted to create a custom chart to show the total income. I created a transparent image and placed a chart behind it.

Functionality 5– Launch Smart Discovery.

A fast access to Smart Discovery with some fixed parameters. I created a clickable image to launch the Smart discovery to get event more insight from the data.

Functionality 6– Radio buttons

Horse racing in Norway have tree different start methods. I needed to see that data for each start method, so I created a Radio button filter for this.

Functionality 7– Filter line

My dataset has 3521 different jockey, so I needed a way to fast search for one of those. FilterLine is a great way to select a dimension member when you have many thousands to choose from.  Select it and look up the Erik Høitomt, he is the most winning jockey in Norway…

Functionality 8– Animated GIF

It is possible to use animated gif’s to “spice” up our dashboard and get the needed eye attention.

Functionality 9–  TabStrip

Using TabStrip gives you the possibility compress much more information in a single page. You create Tab’s with a containers without any coding. I have created five tab’s with different insight on the jockey that was selected in the filterline.

Functionality 10 – Forecast

By going into the forecast tab, you can see the win Forecast for the Jockey.

Functionality 11– Trellies

Trellis gives you a nice way to do visual comparison between tracks.

Functionality 12– Global Filter pane alignment

I wanted to create a green filter bar on the top that was covering 100% of the screen with. This is not possible to do without some coding. I needed to add some code to the Canvas-OnResize to get this functionality to work.