Winning with Data

Chapter 9

Changing the Way We Operate

Change Begins with a Story

To hell with facts! We need stories!

—Ken Kesey

In its simplest form, a story is a connection between cause and effect. Peter tricks the villagers too many times with a false “Wolf” cry. For his transgression, he suffers the loss of his flock. When Aesop wrote his fables, he inculcated in Greek children a sense of cause-and-effect relationships that would serve them all their lives.

Like those morals, the implications of data are best conveyed through stories. At a TedX talk in New York, Ben Wellington explained how he came to call himself a data storyteller. Ben is trained in data science and his wife works as an urban planner. In 2012, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg signed a law granting public access to all urban planning data to citizens through a website. Ben applied his skills to reveal the trends in urban planning. And, with an expert at home, he produced insightful analysis quickly.¹

The New York City government data set contains parking ticket history, bicycle accidents, and taxi pickup and drop-off times and places, among other things. Ben pulled the data and began to pick it apart. In 2013, he published his first analysis: a map of cycling injuries across the five boroughs. Ben published it on his blog, I Quant NY. Many other news outlets syndicated his analysis and traffic ballooned.

Reflecting on his success, Ben realized that his lifelong passion for improvisational comedy, a hobby from ...