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Whitepaper Datastorytelling PDF
Whitepaper Datastorytelling PDF
Data Storytelling
Using visualization to share the
human impact of numbers
2
Storytelling is a cornerstone of the human experience. The universe may be full of atoms,
but its through stories that we truly construct our world. From Greek mythology to the Bible
to television series like Cosmos, stories have been shaping our experience on Earth for as
long as weve lived on it.
A key purpose of storytelling is not just understanding the world but changing it. After
all, why would we study the world if we didnt want to know how we canand should
influence it?
Though many elements of stories have remained the same throughout history, we have
developed better tools and mediums for telling them, such as printed books, movies, and
comics. This has changed storytelling stylesand perhaps most importantly, the impact of
those storiesover the millennia.
But can stories be told with data, as well as with images and words? Thats what this
papers about.
Table of Contents
Story Points................................................................................................................................................................7
and rumble of the temblor, shaking skyscrapers, toppling furniture and buckling
highways.
The Then
2011 quake off waves
the coast as was
of Thoku high as 30 feet
a magnitude rushed
9.0 (Mw) underseaonto shore,
megathrust whisking
earthquake. away
It was the most cars
powerful Earthquake Date Time
1/1/2004 to 2/26/2014
known earthquake ever to have hit Japan, and the 5th most powerful earthquake in the world.
and carrying blazing buildings toward factories, fields and highways.
Magnitude
8 to 9.1
earthquakes select
Magnitude
6.0 8.0
While facts and data form the backbone of this story2:46 p.m., 30 feet highits
the flow of the story that ties them all together. Stories also add embellishments
that make data more memorable. Words like roar and shaking add drama to
the facts, making them easier to relate to.
Data tells you whats happening. Stories tell you why it matters.
4
While this might seem like common sense, it was a pretty big leap at the time.
If you follow an event from start to finish, you begin to understand why it unfolded
that way.
The flow of a story helps us spot causal connections. Getting to the root cause of
an issue can be tricky, but our brains are hardwired to find connections between
events. If you turn them into a well-structured story, it can be easier to spot an
underlying causeand then to share your understanding of that cause.
For instance, teacher turnover has been a problem in Austin, Texas for a decade.
Austins turnover rate has been higher than the national average for all but one of
the past ten years, and by 2013 it had reached 22.3 percent.
U.S. avg.
In August of that year, a former teacher from J.E. Pearce Middle School in East
Austinan area with one of the highest poverty rates in the citypublished his
long-untold story on Salon.com.
In 2002, the year I started teaching at Pearce, he explains, many of the faculty
had been hand-selected to revive the struggling school. When he entered
Pearce, he was determined to do whatever it took to help these kids overcome
classism and racism and escape poverty.
5
But within two years, he had quit. Why? Despite his qualifications and efforts,
in the end he came to believe they were in vain. His experiences led him to
conclude that povertyand not teacher qualitywas the root cause that really
needed to be addressed.
As human beings, were constantly receiving information about the world around
us. The amount of sunlight hitting your eye, the level of ambient noise in your
current locationthese are all data points that tell you something about the
current state of the world.
Since you receive each piece of data at a specific time, you automatically fill in
the missing information between each moment. Its something our brains have
evolved to do exceptionally well: We stitch data points together to turn them into
a cohesive, step-by-step story and decide how to act. Sometimes, we do this too
well. We identify patterns and causes that arent really there.
Teachers
40.0
Pearce Middle school
20.0
0.0
60.0
40.0
Reagan High school
20.0
0.0
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
If the leaders of Austins school system looked at this data in a meeting, each
of them might walk away with a different story about whats causing this rate to
increase. Each would write that story based on his or her individual experiences.
With that story in mind, they would each walk away from the meeting with
separate ideas about how to act next.
But what if the data told a complete story? What if it was told in a clear sequence,
step-by-step from beginning to end? And what if everyone left that meeting
believing in the same storya story founded in data? Could the students in
Austins school system get to their own happy ending, and faster?
Data tells you whats happening, and stories tell you why. When you put them
together, great change is possible.
6
Logical sequence A clear flow turns a collection of facts into a compelling narrative. It glues them
or narrative
together into a structure that makes sense. And the rising action of a story arc
Question Conclusion or
or problem resolution makes it more engaging and memorable.
Thats why weve been telling stories for so long. They are excellent tools for
passing knowledge from one person to another. And theyre exceptionally good
at getting a point across.
A story arc consists of rising
s
action and conflict, presented In 1854, Dr. John Snow was an epidemiologist in London, a city in the clutches of
logically and fluently to lead to
a conclusion.
a cholera outbreak. Dr. Snow had a hunch about how cholera was being spread and
how it could be stopped, but he needed a compelling way to tell this story to the
people who were making the decisions. So he came up with a new way to tell a data
story: he plotted each death on a map of the city.
When he showed his map to the citys leaders, they immediately understood what the
problem was: an infected water pump in an area with no sewage system. Since most
of the deaths occurred near that pump, they decided to replace its handle. Germ theory
was developed less than a decade later.
The tools we use to share visual stories are only getting better with time. Just a few
centuries have brought us from hand-drawn visualizationslike John Snows mapto
movies and computer graphics. Humans continue to build innovative ways to tell powerful
stories. Tableaus Story Points feature is the next evolution of storytelling with data.
7
Story Points
Telling and discovering stories with the same tool
Story Points provide a framework for arranging data visualizations sequentially,
so that you can tell stories with a beginning, middle and endeven with large
and complex data sets. With Story Points, you can tell stories with data in the
same tool you use to analyze data, and your presentation tool stays connected
to your data.
More than 131,000 earthquakes have been detected worldwide since 1973. Weve
also seen many recent high-impact quakes, like the one that struck near Thoku,
Japan in 2011. But is the number of quakes around the world actually increasing?
At the top of this visual, a series of annotations (shown above) guide viewers
through their exploration. By clicking through these annotationslike pages in a
booka series of interactive visualizations appear.
This story begins at the global level, and then focuses in on some of the larger
quakes weve recently seen. After surveying areas such as Japan, it turns to
overall trends of earthquake detection.
Immediately, a trend pops out of the visual. More earthquakes are being detected
than ever before, but most of the increase is actually coming from lower-magnitude
quakes. It seems that earthquakes are not on the rise; rather, weve improved our
methods for detecting them.
Of course, this does nothing to lessen the human impact of larger quakes. But
when youre looking at a complex data setwhether in a research lab, a board
room, or somewhere elseyou need to be able to decide how youll act upon it.
The 2011 quake off the coast of Thoku was a magnitude 9.0 (Mw) undersea megathrust earthquake. It was the most powerful Earthquake Date Time
1/1/2004 to 2/26/2014
knownmagnitude
A big reason people are more aware of earthquakes are the recent "mega-quakes". These quakes are those whose earthquake
is ever to have
Earthquake Datehit Japan, and the 5th most powerful earthquake in the world.
Time The 2011 quake off the coast of Thoku was a magnitude 9.0 (Mw) undersea megathrust earthquake. It was the most powerful Earthquake Date Time
1/1/2004 to 2/26/2014 1/1/2004 to 2/26/2014
greater than 8.0 and they often cause significant damage and lose of live. known earthquake ever to have hit Japan, and the 5th most powerful earthquake in the world.
Magnitude
Magnitude 8 to 9.1 Magnitude
8 to 9.1 8 to 9.1
16 16 16
earthquakes selected earthquakes selected
earthquakes selected
Magnitude 9.0 near the east coast of Honshu, Japan Magnitude 9.0 near the east coast of Honshu, Japan
Magnitude
Magnitude
Magnitude 6.0 8.0
6.0 8.0
6.0 8.0
8
This story was built using visualizations connected directly to the data source.
As earthquakes continue to be detected around the world, the visualizations in the
story will update to include the new data.
Stories help you understand whats going on beneath the surface. From start
to finish, they walk you through a series of events so that you can see whats
causing them to happen.
The data tells you whats happening, but the story guides you to an understanding
of why. And once you understand that cause, you can decide how to act.
Magnitude
16K 4 to 9.1
15K
14K
13K
Since 1973 there has been a steady increase in
the number of earthquakes being recorded with
12K
a particularly strong increase in 2003 to 2005.
11K
10K
Number of earthquakes
9K
8K
7K
6K
5K
4K
3K
2K
1K
0K
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
Magnitude
5 to 9.1
2000
1400
Number of earthquakes
1200
1000
800
600
400
200
0
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
9
Just as Dr. Snow adapted a versatile mediumpaper, pen, and inkto share
a data story, so too can dashboards be shaped into compelling visual stories.
Total Worldwide Cases : 207,420,000
However, theyre already pretty darn good at what theyre usually designed for.
of the Wellcome Trust Sanger When it comes to monitoring your datakeeping its daily pulsean interactive
Institute, shows cases of malaria
around the world. Once you see dashboard is a great tool. And if you notice a change or problem in your data, you
whats going onthat malaria can use a dashboard to investigate the cause. But when you need to communicate
is mainly striking Sub-Saharan
Africachances are you want to your findings to otherswhen you need to convince them to take actionyou
know why. And then you want to
need to show them why.
tell that story.
By putting data in a sequence, you can help viewers understand the context
and make useful connections between each point. Francis uses a series of
visualizations to guide readers through a thought process in a focused, user-
friendly way.
...t hat means over 1700 children, t he equivalent of 32 school buses, will die f rom
In 2013 an est imat ed 627,000 people, 90% of t hem children under 5 died f rom What could you spend $10 on?
malaria
M alaria, t hat s almost t he ent ire populat ion everyonsingle
of Washingt DC... day, t hat s one f or every minut e of every day
City
Item
Det roit Ticket t o t he M ovies
Bost on
Seat t le 3 gallons of gas
Denver Long Last ing Insect icidal Net
Washingt on
Deat hs f rom M alaria One mont h subscript ion t o rdio
Port land Pharrel Williams New Album
Oklahoma Cit y
Las Vegas 5 Dunkin Donut s Cof f ees
Kansas Cit y
10 KFC Hot Wings
At lant a
$1.00 $2.00 $3.00 $4.00 $5.00 $6.00 $7.00 $8.00 $9.00 $10.00 $11.00
0K 50K 100K 150K 200K 250K 300K 350K 400K 450K 500K 550K 600K 650K 700K
Population
Likewise, the former teacher John Savagewho recently wrote about Texas
struggling schoolshas a major hunch about whats causing their problems.
Could he do what Dr. Snow did in 1854: follow his instincts, dive into the data,
and tell a life-changing story with it?
Savages story impacts teachers all over the east side of Austin, Texas. And if
Austin's Teacher
you look at regionalTurnover Problem
data, its clear that Austins east side struggles more than
its (wealthier)
Austin's teacher
turnover rate has
west.
Teacher turnover is a
problem across
The problem is
particularly actue at
Salon.com published
a piece called "I
"At Reagan, 19 of
teachers were giving
A struggle between
teachers and a
In 2014 the S
wrote,
been above the nati.. Austin, although the.. some schools. taught at the worst s.. lessons in subjects f.. principal drove high .. "Multimillion-d
Teachers
6
50
100
161
Savage also alludes to recovery efforts in Austins schools. Did they work?
About six years after he left Pearce, an article in the Austin American-Statesman
reported on a new study that claimed teacher quality was higher in the west than
in the eastand that at Reagan High School in Northeast Austin, 19 percent of
teachers were giving lessons in subjects for which they were not certified. It went
on to describe an incentive program aimed at improving teacher performance.
11
But Savage believes its poverty that needs to be addressed, not teacher
performance. And the turnover rate at Reagan only went up after that article
was published.
Teachers
40.0 39
Mendez Middle school 60
80
20.0
0.0
60.0
40.0
Pearce Middle school
20.0
0.0
60.0
40.0
Reagan High school
20.0
0.0
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
About three years later, the Statesman reported that millions of dollars spent
on teacher incentives had done little to fix the problem. State data would show
teacher turnover to be higher than ever before.
By telling this whole storyfrom the emotional impact its had on real people to
the data that points to the true causea single person could change the game for
teachers and students across Austin.
Stories have always been for everyone. Since ancient times, weve been using
stories to conserve and pass on information. With game-changing inventions like
the printing press, widespread access to information has become a reality. Were
also seeing an explosion of authorship around the world today.
With a data story, hundreds of millions of rows can be distilled into a single
narrative. By following that narrative, its much easier to understand whats going
on beneath the surface. The data can tell you whats happening, and a story can
elucidate the cause.
Perhaps most importantly, though, stories motivate action. And in todays world of
information overload, its crucial to be able to make informed, actionable decisions
with all of your data.
12
Robert Kosara
Michelle Wallace
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