Telling Stories with Data - Data Points: Visualization That Means Something - page 2

More Than Numbers
Face it. Data can be boring if you don't know what you're looking for or don't
know that there's something to look for in the first place. It's just a mix of
numbers and words that mean nothing other than their raw values. The great
thing about statistics and visualization is that they help you look beyond that.
Remember, data is a representation of real life. It's not just a bucket of num-
bers. There are stories in that bucket. There's meaning, truth, and beauty.
And just like real life, sometimes the stories are simple and straightforward;
and other times they're complex and roundabout. Some stories belong in a
textbook. Others come in novel form. It's up to you, the statistician, program-
mer, designer, or data scientist to decide how to tell the story.
This was one of the first things I learned as a statistics graduate student.
I have to admit that before entering the program, I thought of statistics as
pure analysis, and I thought of data as the output of a mechanical process.
This is actually the case a lot of the time. I mean, I did major in electrical
engineering, so it's not all that surprising I saw data in that light.
Don't get me wrong. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but what I've
learned over the years is that data, while objective, often has a human
dimension to it.
For example, look at unemployment again. It's easy to spout state averages,
but as you've seen, it can vary a lot within the state. It can vary a lot by neigh-
borhood. Probably someone you know lost a job over the past few years, and
as the saying goes, they're not just another statistic, right? The numbers
represent individuals, so you should approach the data in that way. You don't
have to tell every individual's story. However, there's a subtle yet important
difference between the unemployment rate increasing by 5 percentage
points and several hundred thousand people left jobless. The former reads
as a number without much context, whereas the latter is more relatable.
Journalism
A graphics internship at The New York Times drove the point home for me.
It was only for 3 months during the summer after my second year of grad-
uate school, but it's had a lasting impact on how I approach data. I didn't
just learn how to create graphics for the news. I learned how to report