Like traditional story telling, data story telling conveys an effective message. It has three components: a set-up, conflict, and resolution. If effective, it can convey information that goes beyond numbers and raw data.
Your data may hold tremendous amounts of potential value, but not an ounce of value can be created unless insights are uncovered and translated into actions or business outcomes
Data storytelling is a methodology for communicating information, tailored to a specific audience, with a compelling narrative. It is the last ten feet of your data analysis and arguably the most important aspect.
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In this TEDTalk, data storytelling pioneer Ben Wellington demonstrates the power of effective data storytelling.
When you hear the term “data analysis,” what do you think of? Your mind may jump to scouring spreadsheets, implementing algorithms, and making mathematical calculations—all “hard skills” of data analysis. Yet, hard skills are useless without their soft skill counterparts. It’s not enough to just analyze data; you need to know how to communicate the story it tells in a clear, compelling manner—a skill called data storytelling.
Data Storytelling is the evolution beyond data visualizations. It is a recognition that well-designed charts aren’t enough to move people to action. We need to use the tools and techniques of narrative stories to engage audiences with data. While the term has been around for a while, we are still early in the discussion about what Data Storytelling means and how it should be practiced.
Building a narrative from data is not immediate for a data scientist, who, natively, is not a storyteller. However, by following some tricks, a data scientist can extract knowledge from data, and build wonderful stories, based on data.
