Data Visualization and Data Storytelling.
Making sense of data
Remember the phrase by the British Mathematician Clive Humby in 2006:
Data is the new oil
The phrase summarizes the essence of data, similar to how important crude oil is.
It doesn't stop there.
Crude oil is an essential material that needs to be refined into different outputs like petroleum, gas, kerosene etc. before it becomes useful. Same applies to data.
Data in any form has to be processed and analysed to become meaningful to target audience e.g., business users and executives, and to solve complex business problems.
This is where Data Visualization and Data Storytelling come in.
Data Visualization and Data Storytelling
These two concepts are important processes in Data Science. With these two processes, Data Scientists can communicate hidden patterns in datasets and tell stories of insights garnered from datasets using narratives.
A Data Scientist finds data visualization easy compared to storytelling. However, it is required for a data scientist to learn the rule and skills of Data Storytelling to become an Excellent Data Storyteller.
I will go on to explain these two concepts in detail: Data Visualization and Data Storytelling.
Data Visualization
Data Visualization involves the use of graphs, charts and graphics to visualize datasets in order to communicate the findings. There are a lot of tools that can be used to visualize datasets e.g Python, Microsoft Excel, Tableau and Power BI etc after doing analyses on the datasets.
Data Storytelling
Data Storytelling, on the other hand, involves the use of narratives to tell a story of the findings from the raw data after performing analyses and creating visuals. The narratives in the form of words are added to the visuals to tell a story of how to solve the initial problem in context.
Next, I would be sharing the rules and tips in Data Storytelling and how to become a good one. Here is also a link to an online resource about Storytelling using data: https://www.slideshare.net/Kurtosys/storytelling-with-data-visualization