Data-Driven

Storytelling
COMBINING NUMBERS & NARRATIVE
What is Data-Driven Storytelling?

 “The world of big data offers opportunities to uncover new insights,

and to tell stories in newly compelling ways.” - Alexandra Samuel,
Ph.D. – Harvard Business Review 2015

 “Focused and relevant data can be incredibly effective at

transmitting your content’s meaning and significance. Yet without
context and proper presentation, statistics and data sets can be
difficult to interpret.” – Visage Content Marketing Agency
How I discovered Data-Driven
Storytelling
 1995 as a GA in the Student Life Office at MSU
 Tasked with creating a campus wide database of disciplinary records
 Student files went back to the 1940’s
 Paper files were keyed into the database
 Developed codes and criteria for offenses and assigned purge dates
 Created queries based on offense types
 Found an abnormal spike in academic dishonesty over three year span
 Investigation revealed a single instructor responsible
 Doubts regarding student guilt prompted file purge
 Data revealed instructor at fault not students
Today’s presentation

 Data
 Big data
 Open data
 Proprietary data
 Storytelling
 Data Visualizations
 Data leading to story
 Story leading to data
Big Data

 “There is no single agreed upon definition of big data. For one, it is

data generated through our increasing use of digital devices and
web-supported tools and platforms in our daily lives.” – SciDev.net

 Big data include open data, proprietary data and much more

 Data scientists are working to apply Big Data across many industries
including healthcare
 Algorithms combing data repositories may someday help to eradicate
disease
Data Growth 2006 - 20011

http://pingv.com/f/imagecache/teaser_full/blogimgs/Exabyteslinear.png
What’s an Exabyte?

http://www.scidev.net/global/data/feature/big-data-for-development-facts-and-figures.html
http://www.scidev.net/filemanager/root/site_assets/global/data_spotlight/graph_global_mobil_data_new_fileminimizer_.jpg
How do we use Big Data?

 Big data has big potential

 Currently much of it is of little value
 Data scientists are working to format and extract applicable information

 For data to be useful we need:

 Insights
 Example: Academic dishonesty data revealed insights
 Actionable insights
 Example: Insights were used to correct student records
Open Data

 “Open data—machine-readable information, particularly

government data, that’s made available to others—has generated
a great deal of excitement around the world for its potential to
empower citizens, change how government works, and improve the
delivery of public services.” – McKinsey - Open data: Unlocking innovation
and performance with liquid information (2013)

 http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/business-technology/our-insights/open-data-unlocking-innovation-
and-performance-with-liquid-information
Examples of open data repositories

 US Government
 http://catalog.data.gov/dataset

 California Health and Human Services

 https://chhs.data.ca.gov/

 Missouri Open Data

 https://data.mo.gov/browse?category=Health&utf8=%E2%9C%93
Professional association open data

 The American Medical Association

 https://healthinequality.org/
 https://healthinequality.org/data/
Open Data Pros & Cons

 Pros
 Free or low cost
 Accessible
 Formatted
 Cons
 Data/programming skills may be required
 May not produce actionable insights
 Limited availability of local information
 Telling Stories with Open Data
 "We're not lacking in data, but what we don't have is narrative.
There is a dearth of good storytelling," said Roy Sekoff, founding
editor of The Huffington Post and co-creator at HuffPost Live. -
AdWeek 2016

 Dr. Ben Wellington of Pratt Institute in Brooklyn

 Blog - http://iquantny.tumblr.com/
 Uses open data to tell stories about NYC
 Found fire hydrant generating $50k in annual fines
 Uncovered $791 million city budget error
 Learned police where ticketing legally parked cars
costing residents $1million per year
Proprietary data
 Organizations collect data everyday
 ERP software (SalesForce, NetSuite, SAP, etc.)
 EMR
 Web sites
 Financial packages (QuickBooks, JD Edwards, etc.)
 Data may be queried for insights
 Clients/Patients
 Employees
 Donors
 Sell access rights
Proprietary Data Example
 EMR company promoting patient portal product
 Physicians concerned patients would not use it
 University of Michigan study regarding 65 and older patients
 Found less than 10% of elderly low health literacy patients used the
internet to find health information - http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11606-014-
3069-5

 Piqued my interest
 Studies show that patients, especially elderly, tend to do what their
doctors tell them
 Created a SQL script
 Pulled data on 1,087 patients chosen at random
Patients logged in to view their
health data
Proprietary Data May Be More
Reliable
 University of Michigan study used open data
 Health and Retirement Study - http://hrsonline.isr.umich.edu/index.php?p=start
 Assessed whether patients searched online for health data
 Did not measure patients’ willingness to view their own health data

 Our data tracked when patients logged into the patient portal
 Percentage was much higher
 Helped to placate the fears of our customers
 Increased patient portal sales and adoption rates
Data Visualizations
Simple graphs/charts may be very effective
40%

35%

30%
Country Percentage
25%
China 38%
20%
USA 24% 15%

UK 15% 10%

5%
Canda 10%
0%
China USA UK Canda China USA UK Canda

Video may also be used to bring numbers to life -

http://bit.ly/2cKgMCJ
Florence Nightingale – Data
Visualization Pioneer
 In the mid 1850’s Florence Nightingale kept detailed records
regarding soldiers’ deaths.
 She found most soldiers where not dying from their wounds but
rather infections and diseases they picked up in the hospital.
 She used a data visualization to plead her case for sanitary
conditions to Parliament.

http://dupress.deloitte.com/dup-us-en/deloitte-review/issue-12/telling-a-story-with-
data.html#endnote-3
The chart on the right shows the rate of soldiers’ deaths before her
ideas were put into place.

The chart on the left shows the reduction in deaths after her
sanitary procedures were adopted.
Infographics
 Depict data in graphical form
 Easily digestible
 Shareable
 Inexpensive
 Targeted
 Promotional
Data Leading to Story

 Open data and propriety data

 Relationships – causation and/or prediction
 Rank order – highest to lowest
 Trends – increases and decreases over time
 Counterintuitive data – surprising and/or challenges conventional
thought
 Comparisons – similarities between datasets

http://buzzsumo.com/blog/how-to-write-data-driven-stories-5-core-narratives/
 Example: Story Leading to Data
• My daughter visiting my mother
on Christmas Day 2015

• Mother’s 3rd surgery in 14 months

• Homebound since release from

hospital on New Year’s Eve 2015.

• Awaiting 4th surgery for same

issue scheduled for Oct 10th

• Anticipated in-patient length of

stay 3 weeks at Barnes in STL
Data helps generalize individual
experience
 1 out of every 5 Medicare patients are readmitted within 30 days of
discharge
 Preventable hospital readmissions cost Medicare $26 billion annually.
$17 billion considered avoidable.
http://revcycleintelligence.com/news/preventable-readmissions-cost-cms-17-billion

New study shows Medicare saves an average of $2,700 per patient

when surgery occurs at high quality facility. http://bit.ly/2dkauJ4
 Using data to expand the story to a larger audience increases the
likelihood the story will be shared.
 Actionable insights for Medicare patients
 Demand a second opinion
 Consider treatment options other than surgery
 If surgery is the choice engage a high quality facility
Summary

 Actionable insights may be derived directly from data or they may

be inspired by an event which leads to data.
 Either way, big data is here to stay. Those who seek to use data to
tell stories may benefit from the ability to reach audiences in new
and meaningful ways.

Thank you
Questions