Communicating with Data

Preface

Communicating with data is a critical 21st-century skill. The demand for data skills from everyone in an organization has grown in the last decade compared to the initial need, which was for more data specialists. When you can use data to communicate, you can influence others’ decisions and achieve your organization’s goals. That’s the first aim of this book: to show you how to understand, visualize, and present data clearly and effectively. Thus, this book will answer questions like these:

• What is communication, and how can you avoid noise interfering with your message?

• What is data, and where can you get hold of this precious resource?

• How can you visualize data?

• How can you make your data visualizations clearer and more effective?

My second goal in this book is to take you a couple of steps past that, so you can avoid some common pitfalls and conflicts that can arise when you use data in your business communications. My aim is to save you time and pain and help you ensure that your audience stays focused on your message. This book will also, therefore, answer questions like these:

• What aspects of data visualization conflict, and how can you balance them?

• What kind of context and presentation should you give your data visualizations?

• What sorts of communication challenges tend to arise in organizational departments (such as IT, HR, or marketing), and how can you overcome them?

• What should you think about when communicating with data in various formats, ...