The Anatomy of a Data Story
Stories are how people make sense of the world, so it follows that they’d also be our way of making sense of data. As much as technology can facilitate data storytelling, it cannot (yet) perform the pivotal step of placing data into the human context. That’s our job, and we’re really good at it. We’re such natural storytellers, in fact, that most of us already use a story format for presenting information.
Take the standard scientific research paper format. After the title and authors (our main cast of characters), we get a summary of the story in the article abstract. It’s like one of Shakespeare’s spoiler-laden prologues, a quick preview of what’s to come. After that comes the Introduction, complete with the scientific problem and research question that incites the story’s action, the experiment itself. The Materials and Methods sections chronicle the heros’ journey as they conduct the experiment, and the Results and Discussion sections are when we find out how they fared. Beginning, middle, end. Rising action, falling action, resolution. Story!
But there’s a big difference between following a narrative arc and telling a story that will deliver an impactful message and linger with audience members. In his TED Talk on data storytelling, blogger Ben Wellington of I ...
Read More on Datafloq
Take the standard scientific research paper format. After the title and authors (our main cast of characters), we get a summary of the story in the article abstract. It’s like one of Shakespeare’s spoiler-laden prologues, a quick preview of what’s to come. After that comes the Introduction, complete with the scientific problem and research question that incites the story’s action, the experiment itself. The Materials and Methods sections chronicle the heros’ journey as they conduct the experiment, and the Results and Discussion sections are when we find out how they fared. Beginning, middle, end. Rising action, falling action, resolution. Story!
But there’s a big difference between following a narrative arc and telling a story that will deliver an impactful message and linger with audience members. In his TED Talk on data storytelling, blogger Ben Wellington of I ...
Read More on Datafloq
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