Data Visualizations: Storytelling and Persuasion

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In Data Visualization: Your Secret Weapon in Storytelling and Persuasion, Adam Singer, Analytics Advocate at Google shares:

β€œIn a world increasingly saturated with data and information, visualizations are a potent way to break through the clutter, tell your story, and persuade people to action.”

Statistics are good but showing your data in context of what makes it relevant with a simple chart or graph makes it that much easier to understand, tell your story and persuade your audience.

Edward Tufte, encourages the use of data-rich illustrations that presented all available data where every data point has a value, but when they are looked at more generally, only trends and patterns can be observed. You should be able to see your data trend at a glance and understand each data point in context.

Tufte also encourages us to avoid β€œchartjunk” – useless, non-informative, or information-obscuring elements of quantitative information displays like over styling and nonessential, gratuitous graphics.

A picture is worth a thousand words but a good infographic may be worth a thousand meetings. πŸ™‚