"Numbers are ideal vehicles for promulgating bullshit. They feel objective, but are easily manipulated to tell whatever story one desires. Words are clearly constructs of human minds, but numbers? Numbers seem to come directly from Nature herself. We know words are subjective. We know they are used to bend and blur the truth. Words suggest intuition, feeling, and expressivity. But not numbers. Numbers suggest precision and imply a scientific approach. Numbers appear to have an existence separate from the humans reporting them." (Carl T Bergstrom & Jevin D West, "Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World", 2020)
"So what does it mean to tell an honest story? Numbers should be presented in ways that allow meaningful comparisons."
"To tell an honest story, it is not enough for numbers to be correct. They need to be placed in an appropriate context so that a reader or listener can properly interpret them." (Carl T Bergstrom & Jevin D West, "Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World", 2020)
"[...] scatterplots had advantages over earlier graphic forms: the ability to see clusters, patterns, trends, and relations in a cloud of points. Perhaps most importantly, it allowed the addition of visual annotations (point symbols, lines, curves, enclosing contours, etc.) to make those relationships more coherent and tell more nuanced stories." (Michael Friendly & Howard Wainer, "A History of Data Visualization and Graphic Communication", 2021)
"Scatterplots are valuable because, without having to inspect each individual point, we can see overall aggregate patterns in potentially thousands of data points. But does this density of information come at a price - just how easy are they to read? [...] The truth is such charts can shed light on complex stories in a way words alone - or simpler charts you might be more familiar with - cannot." (Alan Smith, "How Charts Work: Understand and explain data with confidence", 2022)
"Data becomes more useful once it’s transformed into a data visualization or used in a data story. Data storytelling is the ability to effectively communicate insights from a dataset using narratives and visualizations. It can be used to put data insights into context and inspire action from your audience. Color can be very helpful when you are trying to make information stand out within your data visualizations." (Kate Strachnyi, "ColorWise: A Data Storyteller’s Guide to the Intentional Use of Color", 2023)
"Data storytelling is a method of communicating information that is custom-fit for a specific audience and offers a compelling narrative to prove a point, highlight a trend, make a sale, or all of the above. [...] Data storytelling combines three critical components, storytelling, data science, and visualizations, to create not just a colorful chart or graph, but a work of art that carries forth a narrative complete with a beginning, middle, and end." (Kate Strachnyi, "ColorWise: A Data Storyteller’s Guide to the Intentional Use of Color", 2023)
"When the colors are dull and neutral, they can communicate a sense of uniformity and an aura of calmness. Grays do a great job of mapping out the context of your story so that the more sharp colors highlight what you’re trying to explain. The power of gray comes in handy for all of our supporting details such as the axis, gridlines, and nonessential data that is included for comparative purposes. By using gray as the primary color in a visualization, we automatically draw our viewers’ eyes to whatever isn’t gray. That way, if we are interested in telling a story about one data point, we can do so quite easily." (Kate Strachnyi, "ColorWise: A Data Storyteller’s Guide to the Intentional Use of Color", 2023)
No comments:
Post a Comment