Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals
Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

We know that data can be a powerful tool for decision-making, but it can also be overwhelming and difficult to communicate to others in a meaningful way. This is where Storytelling with Data by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic comes in. I chose this book for our #datamustread book club because it offers a practical guide to creating compelling data stories that resonate with your audience. Today, as we celebrate International Women’s Day, I’m excited to share this book written by a talented female author.

The Power of Storytelling with Data

In this book, we’ll explore the importance of storytelling in data visualization and how it can make your data more impactful. Cole emphasizes the need to understand your audience and context before creating a data story. Using real-world examples, she will show you how to go beyond the traditional tools to create a narrative that is engaging, informative, and compelling.

Data Visualization Best Practices

Storytelling with Data covers the key principles of effective data visualization. From choosing the right type of graph to eliminating clutter, Cole provides practical tips and tools for making your data visually appealing and easy to understand. She also shows how to use design concepts to make your data more engaging.

The Art of Data Storytelling

We’ll also learn how to craft a data story that resonates with your audience. Cole explains how to use data to create a compelling narrative that leads your audience to the key insights. By harnessing the power of storytelling, you can create visual stories that stick with your audience.

Throughout the book, Cole uses numerous real-world examples to illustrate her points. From the good to the bad, she provides insightful commentary on a variety of data stories. She also shares anecdotes and personal experiences that demonstrate the power of data storytelling.

Order Storytelling with Data Today

Storytelling with Data is essential reading for anyone who wants to improve their data visualization skills. By following the lessons in this book, you can turn your data into powerful visual stories that resonate with your audience. If you’re looking to make your data more compelling and actionable, I highly recommend this book. You can order it using this link, which supports both me and the author. If you want to practice more, consider reading one of the other books written by the same author: Storytelling with Data: Let’s Practice!

The Big Book of Dashboards: A Comprehensive Guide to Building Effective Business Dashboards

The Big Book of Dashboards: Visualizing Your Data Using Real-World Business Scenarios
The Big Book of Dashboards: Visualizing Your Data Using Real-World Business Scenarios

As a data enthusiast, you know that creating an effective dashboard is not just about presenting data, it’s about communicating insights and making data-driven decisions. That’s why I’ve chosen The Big Book of Dashboards for our #datamustread book club. Written by Andy Cotgreave, Steve Wexler, and Jeffrey Shaffer, this book is a comprehensive reference that provides real-world solutions for building effective business dashboards.

Let’s dive into what makes this book so valuable for data enthusiasts.

Real-world solutions for building effective business dashboards

The Big Book of Dashboards covers dozens of examples that address different industries and departments, such as healthcare, transportation, finance, human resources, marketing, customer service, and sports, among others. It also covers different platforms, including print, desktop, tablet, smartphone, and conference room displays. With this book as your guide, you’ll be able to match great dashboards with real-world business scenarios.

Practical and effective visualization examples

The book is organized based on scenarios and offers practical and effective visualization examples. You’ll find an entire section of the book devoted to addressing many practical and psychological factors you will encounter in your work. The expert authors have combined 30-plus years of hands-on experience helping people in hundreds of organizations build effective visualizations. They bring uncommon empathy to help you, the reader of this book, survive and thrive in the data visualization world.

Tools, guidance, and models to produce great dashboards

The Big Book of Dashboards gives you the tools, guidance, and models you need to produce great dashboards that inform, enlighten, and engage. A well-designed dashboard can point out risks, opportunities, and more, but common challenges and misconceptions can make your dashboard useless at best, and misleading at worst. This book will help you avoid those challenges and produce dashboards that truly make a difference.

Examples of modern, effective designs

What sets The Big Book of Dashboards apart from its peers is that it contains a number of examples of modern, effective designs. The examples are of good visualizations, rather than bad, and this focus means that the reader is exposed to a vast range of quality content, rather than endless examples of what “not to do.”

Order The Big Book of Dashboards Today

Once you’ve read The Big Book of Dashboards, you’ll want to keep it nearby as a guide for your data visualization projects. The book provides 20+ high-quality dashboards based on all kinds of data from different industries, with detailed explanations of why certain chart types, layouts, and colors were used, why they work well, why other choices were not good enough, and what could be changed to make the dashboard even better.

Order your copy of The Big Book of Dashboards today with this link that supports both me and the authors. Also, comment on the LinkedIn post below for a chance to enter our book giveaway. Happy reading!

#datamustread 2022 Essentials: How to Level Up In Your Data Journey

#datamustread 2022 Essentials

For some time now, I have been using the hashtag #datamustread on LinkedIn and Twitter to regularly recommend books that are essential for a data journey. At the end of this year, I would like to put together some absolute highlights that I consider to be absolute #datamustread books:

📖 True or False by Cindy L. Otis
📖 Info We Trust by RJ Andrew
📖 Tools and Weapons by Brad Smith
📖 Data Science for Business by Foster Provost and Tom Fawcett
📖 Decisively Digital by 24 thought leaders interviewed by me

True or False: A CIA Analyst’s Guide to Spotting Fake News

True or False by Cindy L. Otis covers the entire spectrum of misinformation and disinformation, why we fall for it, and what we can do about it. Even though some concepts are familiar to me, I still learned quite a lot. The book contains a wealth of unexpected examples, current and from history, and is more relevant than ever in today’s world.

Get True or False on Amazon.

Info We Trust: How to Inspire the World with Data

Info We Trust by RJ Andrews is an inspiring journey of data storytelling, but it’s also written in an extremely entertaining way, making this #datamustread the perfect companion for relaxing days. RJ’s enjoyable writing style, by the way, has been a guiding light for my own books.
Continue reading “#datamustread 2022 Essentials: How to Level Up In Your Data Journey”

Shape your Data into Insights with this Humble Bundle of Dataviz Ebooks

Data Visualization x Wiley Humble Bundle: "Pay what you want. Get $989 in books. Support charity!"
Data Visualization x Wiley Humble Bundle: “Pay what you want. Get $989 in books. Support charity!”

I’m honored to support Girls Who Code along with Nathan Yau, Zach Gemignani, and many other great data visualization authors.

Pay what you want and get your dataviz humble bundle here.

More from the Humble Bundle website:

Make insights & analytics take shape

Learn how to give your raw materials form and substance with books like Visual Analytics with TableauData Fluency, and Visualize This from Wiley, filled with expert advice on the tools and techniques you & your organization need. Plus, your purchase helps support Girls Who Code!

Complete list of data visualization books in this humble bundle:

Data Viz Humble Bundle complete list
Data Viz Humble Bundle complete list

UPDATE July 25, 2022: Along with other data visualization book authors, we already raised over $23,000 in donations for Girls Who Code through the Dataviz Humble Bundle: https://bit.ly/DataVizBundle

#datamustread: How to Master Your Data Journey

Covers of Info We Trust, Visual Analytics with Tableau, The Big Book of Dashboards
From ideas to dashboards: The Data Journey Canon

Last year I started lecturing a Data Analytics course at university (as part of an MBA program). In the meanwhile, I was refining the list of books that I highly recommend to read. Three of these books form the Data Journey!

What is the Data Journey?

The Data Journey is a human-focused approach to understand the evolution of data storytelling, the power of visual analytics, and the impact of data from real-world business scenarios.

1. Info We Trust: How to Inspire the World with Data

We start our Data Journey with the book Info We Trust. This book examines all parts of the data storytelling lifecycle across disciplines. The use of marginalia and hand-drawn illustrations give you both simple lessons to take away, and insights into where to find out more. The book is full of magnificent references that inspire further reading.

2. Visual Analytics with Tableau

Now it’s time for hands-on. Visual Analytics with Tableau covers everything you need to get started with Tableau (students get Tableau for free!). The book guides you from the first steps of connecting to data, creating different types of charts, and adding calculation fields to more advanced features such as table calculations, forecasts, and clusters, as well as R, Python, and MATLAB integration for sophisticated statistical modeling.

3. The Big Book of Dashboards: Visualizing Your Data Using Real-World Business Scenarios

Back to business (as this course is designed for an MBA program). We close our Data Journey canon with The Big Book of Dashboards. This is a comprehensive reference book with real-world solutions for business dashboards and detailed analysis of do’s and don’ts. The examples in this book are well-organized and categorized by industry and functional business areas.

Update 10 July 2019: Do you need more inspiration?

#MakeoverMonday: Improving How We Visualize and Analyze Data, One Chart at a Time

Because vizzing alone is only half the fun, you should not miss the #MakeoverMonday book. Eva Murray and Andy Kriebel are icons in the data visualization community (read the interview!) and they have curated the thousands of visualizations from the #MakeoverMonday project into a practical guide that will take your design and data communication skills to the next level!

Which books would you recommend for the #DataJourney?

Share your favorite data books in the blog post comments or reply to this tweet: