Telling a Story with Your Data

In this chapter, you will learn how to tell a story with your data. You will learn how to find a narrative, including what types of stories you can tell with data and how to use the statistical identity of your data to determine a story. You will also learn how to know your audience, including deciding who they are and what would be a compelling presentation for them. You will then learn how to identify a presentation framework, including explaining the question, answer, and methodology. Finally, you will learn how to use visualizations in your presentations.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Finding a narrative
• Knowing your audience
• Determining a presentation framework
• Using visualizations

Let's get started!

Technical requirements

You can refer to the code files for this chapter by going to the following GitHub link: https://github.com/PacktPublishing/learn-sql-database-programming/tree/master/chapter-14.

Finding a narrative

To tell a good story, you will need to find a narrative for your data. A narrative is all about telling the story of your data. A good narrative will draw the reader or listener into the story of your data and make them feel engaged with the topic at hand. People may not feel compelled to listen to or act on your findings if you present them in a dull or overly complicated way.

Types of data stories

There are many different types of stories that you can tell with data:

• Reporting: Tells a story about the past. For example, this could be a batting report for all the players on a specific baseball team.
• Explanatory: Tells a story about what people or things are up to and may include asking people questions...

Knowing your audience

Information regarding who will be viewing your presentation and findings will be necessary for deciding how to present your findings. You will need to determine who your audience is so that you can provide your results in the proper manner.

Determining who your audience is

Your audience can include many people or a specific subset of people. When you are telling a story with business data, some of your audience may be as follows:

• Decision-makers: This could include your manager or the executives at your organization. Your direct manager may want or need more information than an executive, who would like a more high-level, less-detailed presentation.
• Colleagues: This could be people who are on your...

Determining a presentation framework

A presentation framework consists of a few things, including the following:

• Creating a structure for your presentation. This structure will tell your audience what you will cover in your presentation, what the objectives are, and what they will learn.
• Determining the level of information presented, such as how detailed or high-level you want to make your presentation.

To have a proper presentation framework, you will need to ensure that your audience understands what question you are asking, what the answer is, and how you got to the answer.

Explaining the question

You need to begin your presentation by explaining the question you are trying to answer. It's essential to keep your...

Using visualizations

Creating a visualization means taking query results and making graphic representations of the data, such as graphs or charts. The visualizations tell your story, and your words will add the required context, which follows along with the expression that a picture is worth a thousand words. You don't want your audience to sit there reading or watching you read from dry slides of paragraphs or tables, describing your data in great detail. Of course, the detail can and should be available to those who want or need to see it, but your presentation should be mostly visualizations, along with some context, for your findings to shine through.

Common mistakes to avoid in visualizations

There are several things...

Summary

In this chapter, you learned how to tell a story with your data. You learned how to find a narrative, including what types of stories can be told with data, including reporting, explanatory, predictive, correlation, and causation stories. You also learned about combining these types of stories to tell stories about how something changed over time, how to go from a big picture to a narrow focus and vice versa, and comparing and contrasting data. You then learned how to ask questions to get to the question or problem you want to solve. After, you learned how to use the statistical identity of your data to determine a story.

Then, you learned how to know your audience, including determining who they are and what would be a compelling presentation for them. Some of your audience may include decision-makers, colleagues, and the general public. You learned that different types...

Questions

1. What are the types of stories that we can tell with data?
2. How can you combine these stories to tell additional stories?
3. What kinds of people will your audience include?
4. Should you create more than one presentation to accommodate different audiences?
5. How do you determine a presentation framework?
6. How should you go about figuring out the question you want to answer?
7. How should you go about telling the answer to your question?
8. How do you explain your methodology?
9. What are some common mistakes to avoid in your visualizations?
10. What are some common visualization tools you can use?