The role of stories
in data storytelling
by Shawn Callahan
As Edward R. Tufte published each of his beautiful
books on the visual display of complex data – The
Visual Display of Quantitative Information (1983)1,
Envisioning Information (1990) 2 and Visual
Explanations (1997) 3 – I became more and more
fascinated by the question of how to grab the
attention of decision-makers and inspire them
to act based on the data.
I remember an early success back at the start of
the 1990s. I was helping some councillors see
the need for a tree-planting program to provide
nature corridors across their shire. Before they
saw the results of our geographic systems analysis
(what we called computerised mapping before
Google Maps), the councillors had told themselves
the story of how, over the years, they’d invested in
planting trees and that’s why their towns had such
leafy surrounds. They felt they’d done more than
enough. So when we unfurled maps showing tiny
and mostly unconnected stands of mature trees and
a vast expanse of paddock, they were more than
surprised. After the initial shock and some resistance,
they agreed to fund the tree-planting project.
Cognitive psychologist Gary Klein has said that
‘insight is when you unexpectedly come to a
better story’.4 These councillors had just had an
insight, one that we helped them to have.
Back then, I was unaware of the role stories play
in the process of making sense of the data and
communicating insights the analyst uncovers.
But over the last 15 years, my work in business
story techniques and my interest in conveying the
results of data analysis have merged, and I now
see a strong role for story work beyond just telling
the story of the results.
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What follows is a framework for how story
techniques can help the data analysis process.
It is useful for any individual (or group) working
with data, whether you’re a scientist, a marketer,
an engineer or a policy-maker. The challenge in
each case is similar: how do you put yourself in
the best position to make sense of a mass of data
in order to gain insights, and then inspire people
to change based on the discoveries?
We are starting to see things written about the
role of stories in data analysis. For example, Brent
Dykes over at Forbes5 has written a compelling
piece describing the need for data storytelling,
showing that the emphasis today is on data
manipulation and analysis tools and skills. He
predicts there will be a shift to storytelling when
the gap widens between the analysts who are
discovering the insight and the decision-makers
who are learning about it in a way that helps them
care. Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic’s Storytelling with
Data6 also points to the popularity of the idea.
However, Nussbaumer Knaflic’s book is really
a guide to data visualisation, with only a single
chapter on storytelling. And while Dykes laments
the missing link between the analyst and the
decision-maker, his article doesn’t take the
opportunity to appreciate the wider role stories
play in data analysis, beyond just inspiring the
decision-maker.
Here, we will explore the three types of story
work, the role stories play before, during and
after the data analysis, and the various story
patterns that could be employed to inspire a
decision-maker to take action.
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The three types of story work number of leaders in a company, or a broader
In addition to storytelling, there are at least two population of people with a specific demographic,
other ways to employ story work. You can elicit such as overweight, 50+ men prone to heart
stories to find out what is really happening and disease. Regardless of the size and shape of the
how people are thinking. I call this story-listening. group you plan to influence, it’s useful to get an
You can also trigger the telling of a new story idea of the stories they already tell, especially the
by doing something remarkable that others will ones they tell themselves.
remark on. I call this story-triggering. Long before Jon Snow became famous for being
the King of the North, a more mild-mannered
Figure 1 John Snow, a doctor, lived in London, just when
some of the biggest outbreaks of cholera hit in the
mid-19th century.7 Even in the 1850s London was
Story telling a massive city, but with one big difference from
today: it didn’t have a sewage system. London
Story stank. And to make matters worse, although the
triggering lisStory
tening flushing toilet had just been invented, there was
no sewer to flush it into.

So when cholera broke out, it was common

© Anecdote Pty Ltd
practice to blame the spread of the disease on
the miasma – the stench – that sat over the city.
All three forms of story work – storytelling, The thinking was that, as citizens produced more
story-listening and story-triggering – play a role unsanitary smells, cholera would float from one
in discovering an insight and influencing a neighbourhood to another. This story went deep.
decision-maker to act. In one survey of that time, only 5% of doctors
thought cholera was a waterborne contagion.
Let’s explore these three types of story work from
three perspectives of data analysis: what happens The miasma-causes-cholera story was told
before analysis, what happens during it, and what publicly and pervaded the medical literature in
happens after the insight has been discovered. John Snow’s time. But more often than not, the
stories that are informing the way people think
BEFORE data analysis
are hidden. So you need to actively seek out
In business, data DATA STORYTELLING—THE
analysis serves a purpose. The ROLE OF STORIES
these stories, those that lie under the surface, to
results of an analysis are designed to inform or
know what you are dealing with. I call this story-
even inspire decisions – we are not talking about
BEING AWARE OF listening: the active collecting of the stories that
pure research here. And you typically Tknow who’s
HE ANALYS T S’ S TORIE S,
FINDING THE PREPARING TO NOT ICE are being told in any defined population.
DOMINANT S TORIE S AND DE AL WIT H BIA SE S
going to make theseIN decisions. ItION
T HE POPUL AT might be a select S TO RY T E L L I N G
S TO RY-L I S T E N I N G S TO RY-T R I G G E R I N G
S TO RY-L I S T E N I N G S TO RY T E L L I N G S TO RY-L I S T E N I N G

Figure 2

BEFORE DURING AFTER

DATA DATA DATA
ANALYSIS ANALYSIS ANALYSIS

DATA E X P L A N AT I O N D I S C O V E RY TRIGGERING
S TO RY S TO RY STORY A NEW STORY
T IME SERIE S POINT POINT T IME SERIE S
DATA IN T IME IN T IME OR POINT
DATA DATA IN T IME DATA

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Running anecdote circles is an effective technique
for collecting stories. It’s much like running focus
groups, but instead of seeking opinions you
elicit stories. We wrote a popular guide called
The Ultimate Guide to Anecdote Circles,8 which
shows you how to prepare and run them.
Getting back to John Snow, to change the
minds of the medical professional and also the
policy-makers of Victorian England, he needed
to tell a new story with data. His now-famous
map showing the cholera deaths in and around
Soho’s Broad Street (now called Broadwick
Street) did the trick by clearly illustrating the
connection between the street’s water pump,
the people who drew water from it, and those
who perished from cholera. (Figure 3)
It would be folly to think that this one map and
the associated story Snow told changed the minds
of the miasma camp in one fell swoop. The fact
is that Snow had been campaigning for years to
convince people that cholera was a waterborne
disease. That said, his map marked a turning
point. It illustrated what can happen when data
and story combine, especially when you know the
prevailing story you are up against.
DURING data analysis
The act of analysing data involves a constant flow
of evolving stories. For example, in your analysis
you might discover that in your city, 1000 university
Figure 3
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graduates got a job within a month of finishing
their degrees. But compared with what? What
happened to graduates in other cities? You then
discover that 2000 people got jobs right out of
uni in another city. But what is the relative size of
each city? What are the demographics of each
population? What’s the employment rate? What
industries are employing these graduates?
Each answer fills out the story, either making it
stronger or triggering more questions. A good
analyst uses the data along with their imagination,
curiosity and experience to conjure new scenarios
and see if the data rules them in or out, or they
use the data to prompt new possible stories.
Business storytelling specialist Paul Smith, author
of Sell with a Story,9 was once a market analyst for
Procter & Gamble. The Pampers business called
him in to get the data together and run a strategy
session for them. Now Paul was familiar with
the dominant story in this business: if you want
to generate more profit, you need to increase
volume of sales. (Figure 4)
The data did show this strong correlation, but only
up to 1984. After that, there was a marked change
in the pattern Smith was seeing, with no discernible
link between profit and volume. He had to start
testing a range of alternative stories to explain what
had happened. Had the change occurred when
competitor Kimberly-Clarke launched Huggies?
www.anecdote.com
 Figure 4 PA M P E R S
  D I A P E R S
  Figure 5 PA M P E R S
  D I A P E R S
Profits
1961-1982
correlation =
94%
Sales
Source: Sell with a Story, by Paul Smith
Source: Sell with a Story, by Paul Smith
Was it when commodity costs got out of control?
Paul chased down each hypothesis and in the end
discovered that it was when the market reached
full penetration. (Figure 5)
Paul tells the story this way:
“Before we launched disposable diapers in the
early ’60s, everyone used cloth diapers. But
it’s not like once disposable diapers came out,
everybody switched from cloth immediately. It
took years for that to happen. In fact, it turns
out it took exactly 21 years.”
“By 1983, the market for disposable diapers
had essentially reached 100 percent of
households with kids who wore diapers, and
cloth diapers had almost entirely vanished from
the marketplace. Up to that point, everyone
making disposable diapers had rapidly growing
sales numbers, and the rapidly growing profit
numbers to go with them. The cloth diaper
makers, of course, were going out of business.”
“What that means is that the disposable diaper
business in the United States went from a
‘developing market’ to a ‘mature market’ in
1983. And apparently, we (Procter & Gamble)
failed to notice it. We’re still following the same
basic ‘sell more’ strategy we’ve been using
during the developing market period.”10
Analysis is a battle of stories in a very Darwinian
fashion. The one with the best fit with the data
wins. It’s the job of the analyst to explore the
many possible stories that might explain what
they are seeing.
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1982-2000
correlation = 0%
Profits
1961-1982
correlation =
94%
Sales
Source: Sell with a Story, by Paul Smith
Source: Sell with a Story, by Paul Smith
The connection between cause and effect, how-
ever, doesn’t have to get down to root causes.
Marketers have discovered that if you can uncover
a reliable correlation, then you can make decisions
– I’m sure this sends the scientists nuts, but for
a business it can be a practical approach. For
example, large retailers collect masses of data
around loyalty cards, such as purchases, dates,
times, geographies, shopper demographics
and so on. An analyst can explore this data for
strong correlations, and once they are found,
predictions can be drawn.
The following scenario, told by Charles Duhigg
in The New York Times,11 is from the retailer
Target. A woman aged 23 buys cocoa-butter
lotion, a purse large enough to double as a
diaper bag, zinc and magnesium supplements,
and a bright blue rug. Target can predict she
has an 87% chance of being pregnant and
will have her baby in five months. With that
knowledge, they can then send brochures
directly to the woman, encouraging pregnancy-
related purchases.
As Target discovers, though, you have to be
careful with this knowledge. Their analysis results
in a high-school girl receiving advertisements
of maternity clothing and nursery furniture.
Her father is enraged and complains to a Target
manager about the obvious mistake. A few days
later the manager calls to apologise again to the
father. A little sheepishly, the dad admits he’s
had a conversation with his daughter and she
is due in August.
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Whether you are telling the story of the root
causes during analysis or exploring the possible
stories that explain strong correlations, it’s the
stories that help the analyst make meaning out
of what they discover and see whether the data
supports, complicates or refutes the story.
AFTER data analysis
As I’ve said, there’s often a chasm between
an analyst’s insight and the decision-makers
who need to have this insight. Part of the
challenge stems from the background disciplines
of the analysts. They typically are steeped in
mathematics, statistics and IT, and are more
comfortable digging into the data than conversing
with decision-makers about what they’ve found.
On the flip side, decision-makers often assume
that people trained in STEM disciplines are
poor communicators. But the more I work with
engineers, technologists and the many other
flavours of number-cruncher, the more I’ve
learned that many do just fine communicating
their discoveries once they have the basic skills
under their belts. And they are keen to learn.
When you add to that the simple fact that we
are all storytellers, helping analysts convey their
findings in interesting and compelling ways using
story techniques becomes a straightforward task.
Spotting stories
The first thing you need to have clear in your
mind is exactly what we mean when we say
‘story’. This is vital because you won’t get all
the benefits of sharing stories unless what
you’re sharing is actually a story. I’ve offered a
definition in Putting Stories to Work12 and also
on our blog here13 and here.14 But in a nutshell,
you can tell whether something is a story if it
has the following characteristics.
A story begins with a time marker or a place
marker. So when you hear someone say,
“A couple of days ago…” or “Last year…”
or “A while back…”, then it’s likely to be the
beginning of a story. It could also start with
a place, like, “We were next to the river…”
A story has a series of events connected in a way
that infers causality: this happened a couple of
days ago, but then that happened, and as a result
this happened.
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A story has people in it who are doing things. It’s
a giveaway when you hear dialogue, as dialogue
can only be delivered in a story.
Finally, in a story, something unanticipated
happens. When the audience hears it, they are
a little surprised. It’s news to them.
With these simple giveaways, you can now spot
stories. So what types of stories should you tell?
There are three story types and one story
technique you should consider using in data
storytelling.
The data story
When you have a time series and the data does
something unanticipated, then you can tell a
story about it – a data story.
Here’s an example. From the 1920s to the 1930s
in Norway, deaths from heart disease steadily
rose.15 Then in 1939 they plummeted and stayed
low until 1945, after which they quickly began to
rise again. So why would that happen? (Figure 6)
Well, in 1939 the Nazis occupied Norway and
confiscated all of its livestock, forcing the
Norwegians to live off a plant-based diet for the
duration of World War II. This diet reversed the
death rate from heart disease. When the war
ended in 1945, livestock returned and meat and
dairy was added back into the Norwegian diet,
and heart disease came back.
The story about Procter & Gamble and its
Pamper strategy is also a data story.
The data story typically has this basic structure:
• In the past…
• Then something happened…
• As a result…
One of the ways to present a data story is to share
a high-level version of the narrative and then ask
the audience what they think is happening. This
is like presenting the audience with a mystery to
be solved and asking them to be the detectives
(we love mystery stories16). When they come to
the right answer, you can show them the full data
story. Now they own the results – they have had
some involvement in working it out.17
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Figure 6 MORTALIT Y FROM C I RCUL ATORY DISE ASES
Norway 1927-1948. Death Rate per 10,000 people

32

30

28

26

24

1927 1930 1935 1940 1945 1948

Source: A. Strom, R. A. Jensen, M. D. Oslo and M. D. Oslo (1951), ‘Mortality from

Circulatory Diseases in Norway 1940–1945’, The Lancet, 257(6647): 126–9.

A data story is vulnerable in one way: it can be
usurped by a better story. For example, in relation
to the Norway story, what if scientists discovered
that when humans are under extreme stress, we
produce a chemical in our blood that reduces the
likelihood of heart failure? Then the story could
become something like the following.
Before the war, Norwegians were a relatively
relaxed population, and the incidence of heart
disease increased on a par with other Western
cultures. But when the war began, Norwegians’
stress levels went through the roof. Their bodies
produced heaps of chemical X, and heart disease
almost disappeared. But when the war and its
stresses ended, the Norwegians resumed their
old stress-free lives, and rates of heart disease
climbed again.
OK, it’s perhaps not the most compelling
alternative story, but you get my meaning. A key
story principle is that you can’t beat a story with
fact. You can only beat it with a better story.
Stories of the past are often overtaken by new
discoveries. Clearly, the founder of IBM couldn’t
have imagined the scale of future technology
when he predicted the world would only ever
need a handful of computers.
The explanation story
When your analysis is not a time series, then your
story could explain your insight. John Snow’s
cholera map is a good example. On its own,
without a story, the map lacks meaning. However,
you could say it’s likely that on 28 August 1854,
the water pump on Broad Street became infected
when the cesspool for the block overflowed
because of broken brickwork. Houses on Broad
Street fell first – as water was taken from the
pump, you could see a fanning out of the disease
and the resulting deaths in a radial pattern.
Interestingly, there were no deaths at the nearby
brewery as everyone there drank beer to hydrate
and they had their own well to take water from.
The few other unaffected households in the area
were discovered to prefer the water from a pump
that was further afield and unaffected by cholera.
John Snow wrote extensively on how the disease
spread in London and explained all the anomalies
he found in the data. His story was a compelling
account and, as I said earlier, it changed public
health policy in England. As Steve Johnson,
author of The Ghost Map18 and my source for
John Snow’s epic data storytelling, has noted:
“It was going to take more than body counts to
prove that the pump was the culprit behind the
Broad Street epidemic. Snow was going to need
footprints too.”
The discovery story
Sometimes you have to explain how a discovery
was made for the audience to both appreciate
the insight and understand how much work
went into having it.
Google recently completed a comprehensive
study19 into what makes a team productive.

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They concluded there were five factors:
1. Psychological safety – people can and
do speak up
2. Dependability – you do what you promise
to do
3. Structure and clarity – goals are clear and
the process for getting there is known
4. Meaning of work – everyone is here for
more than just a paycheque
5. I mpact of work – the team can see how their
contribution makes a difference.
So they are the facts of the study. But to really
appreciate the work that went into it, and the
twisting and turning the researchers did to find
the five aforementioned factors, you need to
hear the story of the discovery of the insight.
The discovery story adds meaning.
New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg does a
wonderful job of telling this story. Of course, you
wouldn’t relate all the detail in Duhigg’s article20
in an oral telling of the story, but the plot points
provide a handy guide to what you might cover.
Here are some of the things I would tell before
sharing the results of the Google study.
Back in 2012, Google kicked off a study
codenamed Project Aristotle to understand what
makes a great team. The research team started by
reviewing a stack of academic literature on teams,
then applied what they found to 180 Google
teams, but they couldn’t find any patterns. Also,
in the past, Google had thought that putting the
best people together would simply allow magic to
happen. But the researchers’ initial investigation
showed that ‘who’ was on the team wasn’t the
determining factor regarding performance.
The researchers then started searching the data
for anything on group norms: those things that
a group does that denote its habits, its patterns
of behaviour, its culture. This avenue of inquiry
explained the patterns of performance better
than the characteristics of the team members.
Then the team uncovered the idea of
psychological safety in the literature and it was as
if everything fell together. The patterns became
clearer, and five factors emerged that have the
biggest impact on team performance…
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Now you would share the five factors that affect
team performance.
This story would then lead to the next obvious
question, which is how to get these norms
established in your team. Again, you might tell
the discovery stories of the trials and errors that
led to very practical approaches. Or you could
tell the story of how one manager did something
so simple, yet it had a significant impact on
psychological safety.
People want to hear how you made a discovery.
It adds plausibility to your results. If there isn’t an
obvious story in the data, then tell the story of
how you discovered the insight.
Story-triggering
Sometimes your data is so remarkable and so
against the dominant story that people just
don’t believe what you’re saying, despite how
good your data and story are. In 1984, Dr Barry
Marshall faced this challenge.
Back then, the dominant story about stomach
ulcers was that they were caused by stress. The
crazy lives of executives caused more acid to be
in their stomachs, which resulted in ulcers. Barry
Marshall had discovered through his research that
ulcers were actually caused by bacteria. But when
he presented his results, no-one believed him.
He needed to trigger a new story that was so
remarkable, it would replace the dominant story.
Marshall took the radical step of brewing a batch
of the ulcer-causing Helicobacter pylori bacteria
and infecting himself with it. Over a period
of several days when he became incredibly ill,
Marshall tested himself for ulcers, which were
confirmed in abundance. Then he drank his
antibiotic antidote and the ulcers disappeared.
The media found out and reported his findings
under the headline: ‘Guinea-Pig Doctor Discovers
New Cure for Ulcers’. Medical opinion changed
overnight, and in 2005 Marshall won the Nobel
Prize in Physiology for this groundbreaking work.
If you find something remarkable in your data
which goes against the grain of what’s regarded
as deeply true, then test your results by doing
something so remarkable that it will trigger a
story. That said, please don’t drink a flask of
poisonous chemicals!
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Conclusion
It’s true that storytelling can help bridge the gap
between discovering an insight in the data and
influencing decision-makers to use that insight
to take action. But we are leaving so much on
the table by just thinking of story work in these
narrow terms. Story is fundamental to all parts
of the data analysis process.

Hopefully, we will give more thought to the role

story plays before, during and after data analysis.
And when stories are told about the data, we will
look at the multitude of ways in which they can
be told, and the most effective story patterns
to employ to have the greatest impact.

1
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
http://amzn.to/29Ks9V9 Shawn Callahan is the author of
2
Envisioning Information http://amzn.to/29W9dWy Putting Stories to Work and the
3
Visual Explanations http://amzn.to/29W81Ts Founder at Anecdote, the world’s
4
Klein, G. A. (2013). Seeing what others don’t: the largest business storytelling
remarkable ways we gain insights. New York, PublicAffairs.
company.
5
www.forbes.com/sites/brentdykes/2016/03/31/data-
storytelling-the-essential-data-science-skill-everyone-
You can get his book at
needs/#7acea305f0c8
www.puttingstoriestowork.com
6
Storytelling with Data http://amzn.to/2aorpHu
7
The facts presented here about John Snow and the cholera
He works with Global 1,000 companies
epidemic of 1854 are drawn from Steven Johnson’s terrific
2007 book, The Ghost Map: A Street, an Epidemic and the such as Shell, Danone, Microsoft, TESCO,
Hidden Power of Urban Networks (Penguin Books). Allianz and Bayer all around the world.
8
The Ultimate Guide to Anecdote Circles www.anecdote.
com/pdfs/papers/Ultimate_Guide_to_ACs_v1.0.pdf Other articles by Shawn and the
9
Paul Smith (2016). Sell with a Story: How to Capture Anecdote team at www.anecdote.com
Attention, Build Trust, and Close the Sale, AMACOM
http://amzn.to/2aEsSbV You can automatically receive Shawn’s
10
Paul Smith (2016), Sell with a Story: How to Capture
future articles via email by subscribing to
Attention, Build Trust, and Close the Sale, AMACOM
11
Charles Duhigg in The New York Times www.nytimes.
Anecdote’s newsletter at
com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html www.anecdote.com/subscribe
12
Putting Stories to Work http://amzn.to/29Y4Mrm
13
www.anecdote.com/2014/09/story-framework-infographic/ Contact Shawn at:
14
www.anecdote.com/2013/01/storytelling-tips-for- Phone: +61 1300 720 537
leaders-spotting-stories/
www.anecdote.com
15
A. Strom, R. A. Jensen, M. D. Oslo and M. D. Oslo (1951),
‘Mortality from Circulatory Diseases in Norway 1940–1945’,
shawn.callahan@anecdote.com
The Lancet, 257(6647): 126–9. twitter.com/shawncallahan
16
Mystery stories www.anecdote.com/2008/04/why-
should-we-care-about-mystery-stories/
17
My friend and fellow story practitioner Paul Smith pointed
out this approach to me.
18
The Ghost Map http://amzn.to/2aoyg3I
19
Comprehensive study https://rework.withgoogle.com/
blog/five-keys-to-a-successful-google-team/
I would like to thank my friends Paul Smith,
20
Duhigg’s article www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/
magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build- Andrew Ford and Walter Adamson who helped
the-perfect-team.html me think through my ideas.

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