What is Story?
People who work with and communicate data tend to throw around the words “story” and “data” a lot these days. We say all too regularly, “Let’s tell a story with these data” or “What story do these data tell us?”…
Continue readingPeople who work with and communicate data tend to throw around the words “story” and “data” a lot these days. We say all too regularly, “Let’s tell a story with these data” or “What story do these data tell us?”…
Continue readingUPDATE (4-9-2019): Along with Jon Peltier from PeltierTech, Inc., I have released a new Excel add-in that you can purchase and customize. You can read more about it at The Chart Styles Excel Add-In blog post. Data workflow issues are…
Continue readingThis post kicks off a partnership with Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic from Storytelling with Data in which we are interested in exploring how organizations improve the way they communicate data. This is one of the biggest questions Cole and I both…
Continue readingWhich country do you think has a higher infant mortality rate: Russia or Malaysia? Sri Lanka or Turkey? The late Hans Rosling used these questions in a 2006 TED talk to demonstrate that Swedish graduate students, who might make poorly…
Continue readingA few weeks ago, I wrote about how Cognitive Load Theory can be applied to delivering clear, effective presentations. A second learning theory that may be useful for presenters to understand is a group of learning principles developed by psychologist…
Continue readingChoosing and implementing color palettes is a difficult task in visualizing data. Color can be used to highlight and draw attention, but also to confuse. It can be used to make things seem drab or to make them “pop”. As…
Continue readingYou have likely witnessed your share of mediocre presentations, where the slides were full of text and bad graphs. You probably tuned out periodically, checked your email, and eventually stopped paying attention altogether. (You may have also seen members of…
Continue readingWe’ve all sat through boring presentations where the presenter reads the slides, shows barely-legible tables and graphs, and goes over time—many of us have probably given bad, boring presentations. In research and academic circles, we tend to excuse bad presentations…
Continue readingI’m often asked about my favorite all-time speeches or presentations. There are the obvious speakers who make the top lists: Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Steve Jobs, for example. There are others whose TED talks have been…
Continue readingResearchers and analysts have some unique challenges when it comes to presenting their data and analysis. We are often more focused on the data, statistics, and estimation results than soaring rhetoric or specific calls to action. That means we’re prone…
Continue reading