Effective Data Storytelling

Master the art and science of data storytelling—with frameworks and techniques to help you craft compelling stories with data. The ability to effectively communicate with data is no longer a luxury in today’s economy; it is a necessity. Transforming data into visual communication is only one part of the picture. It is equally important to engage your audience with a narrative—to tell a story with the numbers. Effective Data Storytelling will teach you the essential skills necessary to communicate your insights through persuasive and memorable data stories. Narratives are more powerful than raw statistics, more enduring than pretty charts. When done correctly, data stories can influence decisions and drive change. Most other books focus only on data visualization while neglecting the powerful narrative and psychological aspects of telling stories with data. Author Brent Dykes shows you how to take the three central elements of data storytelling—data, narrative, and visuals—and combine them for maximum effectiveness. Taking a comprehensive look at all the elements of data storytelling, this unique book will enable you to: Transform your insights and data visualizations into appealing, impactful data stories Learn the fundamental elements of a data story and key audience drivers Understand the differences between how the brain processes facts and narrative Structure your findings as a data narrative, using a four-step storyboarding process Incorporate the seven essential principles of better visual storytelling into your work Avoid common data storytelling mistakes by learning from historical and modern examples Effective Data Storytelling: How to Drive Change with Data, Narrative and Visuals is a must-have resource for anyone who communicates regularly with data, including business professionals, analysts, marketers, salespeople, financial managers, and educators.

Master the art and science of data storytelling—with frameworks and techniques to help you craft compelling stories with data. The ability to effectively communicate with data is no longer a luxury in today’s economy; it is a necessity. Transforming data into visual communication is only one part of the picture. It is equally important to engage your audience with a narrative—to tell a story with the numbers. Effective Data Storytelling will teach you the essential skills necessary to communicate your insights through persuasive and memorable data stories. Narratives are more powerful than raw statistics, more enduring than pretty charts. When done correctly, data stories can influence decisions and drive change. Most other books focus only on data visualization while neglecting the powerful narrative and psychological aspects of telling stories with data. Author Brent Dykes shows you how to take the three central elements of data storytelling—data, narrative, and visuals—and combine them for maximum effectiveness. Taking a comprehensive look at all the elements of data storytelling, this unique book will enable you to: Transform your insights and data visualizations into appealing, impactful data stories Learn the fundamental elements of a data story and key audience drivers Understand the differences between how the brain processes facts and narrative Structure your findings as a data narrative, using a four-step storyboarding process Incorporate the seven essential principles of better visual storytelling into your work Avoid common data storytelling mistakes by learning from historical and modern examples Effective Data Storytelling: How to Drive Change with Data, Narrative and Visuals is a must-have resource for anyone who communicates regularly with data, including business professionals, analysts, marketers, salespeople, financial managers, and educators.

Don't simply show your data—tell a story with it! Storytelling with Data teaches you the fundamentals of data visualization and how to communicate effectively with data. You'll discover the power of storytelling and the way to make data a pivotal point in your story. The lessons in this illuminative text are grounded in theory, but made accessible through numerous real-world examples—ready for immediate application to your next graph or presentation. Storytelling is not an inherent skill, especially when it comes to data visualization, and the tools at our disposal don't make it any easier. This book demonstrates how to go beyond conventional tools to reach the root of your data, and how to use your data to create an engaging, informative, compelling story. Specifically, you'll learn how to: Understand the importance of context and audience Determine the appropriate type of graph for your situation Recognize and eliminate the clutter clouding your information Direct your audience's attention to the most important parts of your data Think like a designer and utilize concepts of design in data visualization Leverage the power of storytelling to help your message resonate with your audience Together, the lessons in this book will help you turn your data into high impact visual stories that stick with your audience. Rid your world of ineffective graphs, one exploding 3D pie chart at a time. There is a story in your data—Storytelling with Data will give you the skills and power to tell it!

Influence action through data! This is not a book. It is a one-of-a-kind immersive learning experience through which you can become—or teach others to be—a powerful data storyteller. Let’s practice! helps you build confidence and credibility to create graphs and visualizations that make sense and weave them into action-inspiring stories. Expanding upon best seller storytelling with data’s foundational lessons, Let’s practice! delivers fresh content, a plethora of new examples, and over 100 hands-on exercises. Author and data storytelling maven Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic guides you along the path to hone core skills and become a well-practiced data communicator. Each chapter includes: ● Practice with Cole: exercises based on real-world examples first posed for you to consider and solve, followed by detailed step-by-step illustration and explanation ● Practice on your own: thought-provoking questions and even more exercises to be assigned or worked through individually, without prescribed solutions ● Practice at work: practical guidance and hands-on exercises for applying storytelling with data lessons on the job, including instruction on when and how to solicit useful feedback and refine for greater impact The lessons and exercises found within this comprehensive guide will empower you to master—or develop in others—data storytelling skills and transition your work from acceptable to exceptional. By investing in these skills for ourselves and our teams, we can all tell inspiring and influential data stories!

NOW IN FULL COLOR! Written by sought-after speaker, designer, and researcher Stephanie D. H. Evergreen, Effective Data Visualization shows readers how to create Excel charts and graphs that best communicate their data findings. This comprehensive how-to guide functions as a set of blueprints—supported by both research and the author’s extensive experience with clients in industries all over the world—for conveying data in an impactful way. Delivered in Evergreen’s humorous and approachable style, the book covers the spectrum of graph types available beyond the default options, how to determine which one most appropriately fits specific data stories, and easy steps for building the chosen graph in Excel. Now in full color with new examples throughout, the Second Edition includes a revamped chapter on qualitative data, nine new quantitative graph types, new shortcuts in Excel, and an entirely new chapter on Sharing Your Data With the World, which provides advice on using dashboards. New from Stephanie Evergreen! The Data Visualization Sketchbook provides advice on getting started with sketching and offers tips, guidance, and completed sample sketches for a number of reporting formats. Bundle Effective Data Visualization, 2e, and The Data Visualization Sketchbook, using ISBN 978-1-5443-7178-8!

This book presents an accessible introduction to data-driven storytelling. Resulting from unique discussions between data visualization researchers and data journalists, it offers an integrated definition of the topic, presents vivid examples and patterns for data storytelling, and calls out key challenges and new opportunities for researchers and practitioners.

From tracking down information to symbolising human experiences, this book is your guide to telling more effective, empathetic and evidence-based data stories. Drawing on cross-disciplinary research and first-hand accounts of projects ranging from public health to housing justice, The Data Storytelling Workbook introduces key concepts, challenges and problem-solving strategies in the emerging field of data storytelling. Filled with practical exercises and activities, the workbook offers interactive training materials that can be used for teaching and professional development. By approaching both ‘data’ and ‘storytelling’ in a broad sense, the book combines theory and practice around real-world data storytelling scenarios, offering critical reflection alongside practical and creative solutions to challenges in the data storytelling process, from tracking down hard to find information, to the ethics of visualising difficult subjects like death and human rights.

Readers will learn to understand the story behind the data and how to influence the people with a DataStory.