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Five Tips for Better Data Stories

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Originally published on September 22, 2015 in BI This Week, a TDWI publication.

A “data story” sounds like such a great idea. You just mix data with storytelling and you’re done — except that most data storytellers get one thing wrong: they drown out the story with data.

Such storytellers, I believe, assume that audiences enjoy data as much as they themselves do. For them, data ranks with love, food, and air. They throw visualization upon visualization at audiences because in the belief that data is the new language of business.

The trouble is that many of us in business — roughly 80 percent of business people, according to business intelligence industry studies — don’t embrace data with such warmth.… Read the rest “Five Tips for Better Data Stories”

How to find a story in data: What a news reporter would do

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Originally published on December 15, 2015 in BI This Week, a TDWI publication.

A data analyst raised her hand in a class I taught on data storytelling and asked the question I hadn’t even thought about since journalism school: How do you “see” a story in a jumble of facts?

It’s a novel problem for data analysts, but it’s an old one for journalists. In fact, as confusing as the task seems to analysts, the confusion is a mystery to journalists. Don’t analysts know a story when they see one?

Now in the grand new confluence, journalists use data and analysts tell stories — and each side shudders with the other’s ham-handed work.… Read the rest “How to find a story in data: What a news reporter would do”

Getting to less: executive-level storytelling at Schwab

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A key part of telling a story with data, says a Schwab executive I talked to last week, is thinking like a business person.

“You want to go for the high-level ‘aha!’” says John F. Carter, Schwab senior vice president of analytics and business insight, in San Francisco. Start the main conclusion, similar to news reports. “Less is more, but the right less. Executives don’t have time to get into the weeds.”

“The right less” has a long tail, where most of the data should go.

Less is also hard. The monthly summary comes after a long process of finding the story.… Read the rest “Getting to less: executive-level storytelling at Schwab”

Data driven? No, you’re story driven, says German data scientist

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Just when data seems to be approaching maturity as a touchstone in business, along comes a data scientist with doubts. Data is like the stone in stone soup, he says. It has not a single calorie of meaning.

“The beef is in data fiction,” says Joerg Blumtritt, CEO of Munich-based Datarella and consultant to a long string of large European and American clients in manufacturing and media. He comes to his observations after years of consulting and research.

“Fiction” in the same breath as data? Any kind of story at all frightens some data people, and now you talk about fiction!… Read the rest “Data driven? No, you’re story driven, says German data scientist”

Scenarios for a Qlik Sense data story

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Real data storytellers know that data framed in a story is much more effective than data standing all alone by its naked self. They also know that storytelling is a giant that can lose much of its power when tied down to a vendor’s product.

We can applaud Qlik for respecting these facts. We can also applaud McKesson senior director of procurement analytics Jin Ro, who talked about storytelling last Thursday at the Qlik Virtual Forum. And let’s give an extra whistle for saving any mention of Qlik Sense for the end.

In his half hour keynote, he started with the case for stories: He recounted an experiment in which stories were shown to be far more memorable than data.… Read the rest “Scenarios for a Qlik Sense data story”