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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”

Lending a hand to would-be storytellers

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Advocating data storytelling is easy. But actually making a data story out of data is something else. As much as storytelling could help to deliver meaning, says one consultant who works up close to the action, many data analysts just don’t even know where to start.

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“If no one teaches you how to tell a story, how do you do it?”says DecisionViz president Lee Feinberg. How do you expect them to tell a story in words or visualizations? “Face it, most of them aren’t even good at writing or English.” What might be hard even for natural storytellers is making a set of reports into something meaningful.… Read the rest “Lending a hand to would-be storytellers”