Читать книгу Storytelling with Data - Knaflic Cole Nussbaumer - Страница 7

In school, we learn a lot about language and math. On the language side, we learn how to put words together into sentences and into stories. With math, we learn to make sense of numbers. But it’s rare that these two sides are paired: no one teaches us how to tell stories with numbers. Adding to the challenge, very few people feel naturally adept in this space.

This leaves us poorly prepared for an important task that is increasingly in demand. Technology has enabled us to amass greater and greater amounts of data and there is an accompanying growing desire to make sense out of all of this data. Being able to visualize data and tell stories with it is key to turning it into information that can be used to drive better decision making.

In the absence of natural skills or training in this space, we often end up relying on our tools to understand best practices. Advances in technology, in addition to increasing the amount of and access to data, have also made tools to work with data pervasive. Pretty much anyone can put some data into a graphing application (for example, Excel) and create a graph. This is important to consider, so I will repeat myself: anyone can put some data into a graphing application and create a graph. This is remarkable, considering that the process of creating a graph was historically reserved for scientists or those in other highly technical roles. And scary, because without a clear path to follow, our best intentions and efforts (combined with oft-questionable tool defaults) can lead us in some really bad directions: 3D, meaningless color, pie charts.

Skilled in Microsoft Office? So is everyone else!

Being adept with word processing applications, spreadsheets, and presentation software – things that used to set one apart on a resume and in the workplace – has become a minimum expectation for most employers. A recruiter told me that, today, having “proficiency in Microsoft Office” on a resume isn’t enough: a basic level of knowledge here is assumed and it’s what you can do above and beyond that will set you apart from others. Being able to effectively tell stories with data is one area that will give you that edge and position you for success in nearly any role.

While technology has increased access to and proficiency in tools to work with data, there remain gaps in capabilities. You can put some data in Excel and create a graph. For many, the process of data visualization ends there. This can render the most interesting story completely underwhelming, or worse – difficult or impossible to understand. Tool defaults and general practices tend to leave our data and the stories we want to tell with that data sorely lacking.

There is a story in your data. But your tools don’t know what that story is. That’s where it takes you – the analyst or communicator of the information – to bring that story visually and contextually to life. That process is the focus of this book. The following are a few example before-and-afters to give you a visual sense of what you’ll learn; we’ll cover each of these in detail at various points in the book.

The lessons we will cover will enable you to shift from simply showing data to storytelling with data.

FIGURE 0.2 Example 1 (before): showing data

FIGURE 0.3 Example 1 (after): storytelling with data

FIGURE 0.4 Example 2 (before): showing data

FIGURE 0.5 Example 2 (after): storytelling with data

FIGURE 0.6 Example 3 (before): showing data

FIGURE 0.7 Example 3 (after): storytelling with data