Effective Data Storytelling

Chapter 3 The Psychology of Data Storytelling

Stories not only give us a much-needed practice on figuring out what makes people tick, they give us insight into how we tick.

—Lisa Cron, story analyst and author

When you work with data on a regular basis, it can be difficult to see why solid evidence can’t be compelling in its own right—without the need for storytelling. When we’re convinced of the strength of our findings, we say “the facts speak for themselves.” In other words, if people are simply exposed to the same numbers as we were, they will be equally enlightened. In these situations, we expect rational human beings to appreciate the soundness of our well-founded insights, arrive at the same conclusions, and be equally motivated to pursue a logical course of action. However, we often discover—to our disappointment—that the facts don’t seem to stand on their own. In attempting to pass along our discoveries, something is somehow lost in translation. When an audience fails to grasp the significance of our findings, we are left wondering how this could happen when the numbers spoke so clearly and forcefully to us.

A Hungarian doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis (1818–1865) found himself in this predicament after making a significant lifesaving discovery in the field of obstetrics. In 1846, Semmelweis was appointed as the first assistant to the professor of obstetrics at a large Vienna-based maternity hospital that had two clinics for training doctors and midwives. Similar to other ...