1. Conference September 2016 Are You Sitting Comfortably?
Telling the story behind the findings to add value & impact
Daniel Wain & Malcolm Rigg
9th September 2016

2. Introduction Andrew Ehrenberg, Edward Tufte and Storytelling?
Different ways of telling and presenting
Survey Data Reduction
Infographics
Storytelling

3. Whodunnit? 3

5. Andrew Ehrenberg
‘No one had ever given any explicit guidelines or rules for how and why we had come to set out our tables of data so as to make any patterns in them become self-evident. Making this tacit know-how explicit… took much time and effort. It ended up as the Data Reduction book’

6. Data Reduction
The transformation of numerical or alphabetical digital information into an ordered simplified form
How we can organise data to discover what is important in the data
How we can effectively and concisely present this data in tabular or summary form
The Met Office, for instance, collects 10 million data points a day and reduces the data to 3,000 weather forecasts a day

7. How to achieve this?
Step 1: Round to two digits (that vary in the data)
Few can divide 35.2% by 17.9%
When rounded, it’s obvious that 35 and 18 are about twice the other!

8. The other steps Use row and column averages as foci
Place figures to be compared in columns
Order rows and columns by size
Design effectively
Use spacing and layout creatively
Use graphs only to convey qualitative messages

9. Premier League

10. Edward Tufte
Tufte’s aim - ‘To condense large amounts of information into a form where it will be more easily absorbed by the reader’
As well as numeric data, infographics often deal with ‘qualitative’ or soft subjects

11. Tufte’s turf!
Start with whatever data that’s relevant and available to address an issue
Two main principles:
Ethical values: truthfulness / avoid misrepresentation
Aesthetic values: maximise signal to noise ratio, avoid extraneous elements, use words, numbers and images together

12. Integrity

13. Other ‘Principles’ Other so called ‘principles’ that he cites concern:
Attractive displays of statistical data and integrating statistics with words and images
Choices of colours that he argues work well together (some evidence based)
Tufte argues that graphics can reveal data and be more precise than conventional statistical computations

14. So-called aesthetic principles
Aesthetic values vary:
Competition between cultures, individuals, generations, social classes, and different views at different times
Competition to be seen and heard in a society saturated with images
Competition between design and style, whether William Morris, Art Deco, Art Nouveau, Bauhaus and many other styles
Tension and conflicts between seeking attention (loud!) and providing information and analysis (neutral)

15. A useful infogram

16. Path not clear to viewer!

17. How the rich got richer
Clear and elegant and informs us how well the top ten per cent have thrived in the last 30 years compared with the rest of the population

18. Employees of USA Government
Help!

19. China and leading brands
Chartjunk!

20. Ehrenberg v. Tufte Ethics: truthfulness
Survey Data Reduction rules
Round to two digits (that vary in the data)
Use row and column averages as foci
Order rows and columns by size
“To condense large information to be easily absorbed”
Ethics: truthfulness
Principle: high signal to noise ratio
Aesthetics? value and context driven!

21. The Power of Story

23. Effective Communication
Is all about the receiver
Has a life beyond itself / is a means to an end
Clarity of purpose
What do I want my audience to know, do, think & feel?

24. Coping with ‘infobesity’
‘We can’t notice and know everything; the cognitive limits of our brain simply won’t let us. That means we have to filter or edit what we take in’
Margaret Heffernan

25. Effective Communication
Is all about the receiver
Has a life beyond itself / is a means to an end
Clarity of purpose
What do I want my audience to know, do, think & feel?
What’s in it for them?
Why should they read, understand, remember & act upon it?

26. Pass the Elevator (or ‘So What?’) Test26

27. Effective Communication
Is all about the receiver
Has a life beyond itself / is a means to an end
Clarity of purpose
What do I want my audience to know, do, think & feel?
What’s in it for them?
Why should they read, understand, remember & act upon it?
Have a confident POV on the kind of story this is
Manage & meet their expectations

28. What are all the essential story elements that need to be there to communicate it clearly & compellingly? 28

29. Use data & evidence to support your story, rather than confuse or complicate it

30. What’s the most effective, compelling, ‘no-brainer’ order in which to communicate all the relevant, actionable story elements & data? ? 30

31. Or maybe… 31

32. Pass the iPhone test… ‘Our readers don’t scroll’
Online editor of best-selling tabloid

33. Gorillas in our midst…
Alan Mitchell on the work of Chabris & Simons at Harvard

34. ‘A person can have the greatest idea in the world, completely different and novel but, if that person can’t convince enough people, it doesn’t matter’
Dr Gregory Berns

36. Thank you for listening
Conference September 2016
Thank you for listening