Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

I am a university professor who teaches biostatistics and I find this to be one of the best books that bridges the gap between analytics and presentation. There are some excellent books around that show visualization (e.g.,  The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics: The Dos and Don'ts of Presenting Data, Facts, and Figures  or books by Few  Information Dashboard Design: Displaying Data for At-a-Glance Monitoring  & Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten  or Cairo  The Truthful Art: Data, Charts, and Maps for Communication ) and there are good books on presentation (in particular I love Duarte's books  Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences ) but this book is unique in how well it blends the two topics. I have never seen such an excellent presentation on how to build a series of graphics. That is, with books by Few or Cairo you will know how to make *a* great graphic and with advice from Duarte, you can connect with your audience but with this book you will see how to build a series of interrelated graphics that highlight different parts of a dataset. Most of the examples are spun around business but the examples are easy to extend to any field.While I think the author wrote this for people who do presentations in any quantitative field for a living, this book should be required reading for graduate students preparing to defend a dissertation or thesis.

This book was required by my data visualization class. I wasn't able to find a cheap used version of this book so I ended up reading the temporary PDF my school had at the library. Let's just say this... This book is SO good and SO useful, that I ended up shelling out money to buy it AFTER I've read the book already and AFTER the class was over. I think it's just such a handy guide for anyone to have. I'm sick of crappy presentations overloaded with meaningless data that don't convey any useful information. If you are too, I highly recommend this book.

The "book" arrived as a trapezoidal nightmare! I'm not sure who's in charge of quality control at the printing press but this is just ridiculous. First, I'm baffled as to how this can leave the printing press in this condition. Second, how can the person fulfilling the order not see that the book is malformed?? Really? I'll admit, I did get a nice laugh. But the joke's on me. Now I have waste my time returning this monstrosity.

The author, Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, uses simple examples and explains to every reader about how to communicate to audience using data.You could implement these concepts by hand. Learning how to use PowerPoint well doesn’t mean you could give an excellent presentation to the audience. You must display your idea like a well-trained designer and tell a story like a Hollywood script director.So, the author borrows some professional elements from design and script-writing such as affordance, acceptance and storyboarding. In the chapter of “case studies”, the author demonstrates how she would fix the not-so-good graphs by the concepts covering in this book.Telling an emotional or persuasive story using data is a hard work. If we don’t consciously recognize that this takes time to do well. We run the risk of losing the potential opportunity to drive change and action.This is the final step the audience will see. We should devote our time to storytelling with data.

My office was raving about this book, but I found this book to be extremely disappointing.The book was so basic as to be insulting. I literally GROANED as the author explained, as if this were a groundbreaking concept, to know your audience. I rolled my eyes as she delivered Pro-Tips® like: "don't clutter your slides!" And "don't read off your slides when delivering a presentation".Do you remember that introduction to public speaking class you took in high school/ college? Yup. This is that without the benefit of having in-class practice time.Pro-Tip® Skip it!

I work in the project controls arena of large projects that have hundreds, if not thousands of people working on them. A key requirement for project controls is to keep all project personnel informed about the project status. Needless to say engineering plays a major role on these projects and brings lots of data with them; pages and pages of it. As the author points out the analytical types are not necessarily trained on how to tell a story (i.e. communicate) with their data.For the last 10 years or so, I have developed methods for getting the project story down to a single graphic. It's usually a large graphic, but a single one. It has the effect of getting everyone on the same page. But for people who are not used to looking at this type of presentation, it can be overwhelming or as the author points out they have to work at it in order to understand it. This was a key point for me.Before I finished the book, I started making changes in my work products. They were small changes, but the feedback was very positive. One example, do you ever note information in page footers like date, time and maybe filename and path? Does anyone think to put them in the background by using a shade of gray instead of the default black? No! Try it. Then ask for opinions It doesn't sound like much, but it's reducing the competition on people's focus.This book is great! It's fairly short to read and has a lot of examples making it easy to follow the author's intent. She obviously is very good at her profession. If I had to pick one book as a recommendation to someone who wants to learn about making great presentation graphics, I will point to this book. I highly recommend it. But, the book doesn't stop there, the author has included a listing of resources (e.g. books and websites) for continued learning.

Don’t be fooled by the title. It’s not about visualising business information and modelling it’s about visualising KPIs. I’m sure it’s a fine book. Just not what I wanted.... it’s bar and line charts not how to tell a story using the core data. My fault. Didn’t do my homework!

It is difficult (if not impossible) to manage what cannot be measured. Yes, there are “intangibles” (e.g. empathy) that have unique value and importance. Quantifying the so-called “soft skills” (e.g. listening) also poses challenges. However, the fact remains that data visualization can enrich and extend a narrative’s impact, especially when the objective is persuasion or resolution rather than entertainment.What Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic provides in this volume is an abundance of information, insights, and counsel that can help almost anyone to master the skills needed, in Knaflic's words, “to visualize data and tell stories with it” in order to turn the data “into information that can be used to drive better decision making.”These are among the several dozen passages of greatest interest and value to me, also listed to suggest the scope of Knaflic’s coverage:o Thinking like a designer (Pages 15-16 and 127-150)o Importance of context (19-33)o Selecting visuals that will be effective (35-69)o Graphs (43-49)o Bar charts (50-59, 156-158, 161-162, and 236-237)o Visuals to avoid (61-68)o Voiding clutter (71-98)o Gestalt Principles of Visual Perception (74-81)o Lack of visual order (81-86)o Focusing on an audience’s attention (99-126)o Preattentive attributes (102-116)o Affordances (128-138)o Hierarchy of Information (135-138)o Accessibility (138-145)o Storytelling (165-185)o Storytelling with data process (187-205 and 242-255)o Case Study 2: Leveraging animation in the visuals you present (210-218)o Case Study 4: Strategies for avoiding the spaghetti graph (227-234)I agree with Knaflic: “There is a story in your data. But your tools don’t know what that story is. That’s where it takes you — the analyst or commentator of the information — to bring that stay visually and contextually to life. That process is the focus of this book.”These are the specific learning objectives on which she focuses, each preceded by “How to….”o Understand the context in which the story is presentedo Select an appropriate visual display of the datao Eliminate cluttero Focus attention where it is most neededo Think like a designero Tell the story (setting. characters, plot, conflicts, resolution, etc.)Presumably Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic agrees with me that the most effective storytellers are aware of an unspoken question that every member of the given audience has in mind: “Why should I care?” or perhaps “What’s in it for me?” The story format will help to engage their interest but there must also be substantive support of the message. That’s where the data component is decisive, for better or worse. If you need help with creating visualizations “that are thoughtfully designed to impart information and incite action,” look no further.

The book is light and readable: I read this book in practically one sitting. It is a concise an informative summary of what you need to do to present data in an engaging manner. The methodology presented is sensible and uncomplicatedIt would get 5 stars from me if there was an appendix with more detail on exactly how to produce some of the graphs shown in excel but the book fulfills its purpose in describing what is to be done and encouraging the reader to get to know their tools to achieve what they need

Great and pragmatic guidance on how to present data for people to understand. The books works well with the on-line information that's also published. This is a "must have" for anyone that has a need to present information in a clear, concise and graphical way.

Very easy to read with simple but effective ways to improve how you present data.My wife normally can't get on with my book choices as they're generally very technical but she's reading and utilising the lessons in here even more than I am.