5 minutes to understand data storytelling!
By: Charles Miglietti
Tags: Dashboard, Dataviz, Business Intelligence, Data Visualization, Productivité

Data-visualization, or Dataviz… all of this overlaps with one and the same concept: the graphical exploitation of data. But what does this mean in practice?

The advent of digital also coincides with the explosion of Big Data. Through their digital activities, companies today aggregate hundreds of thousands of data… and to analyze them and draw conclusions: they can transform tables of figures into visual representations thanks to Dataviz! Next comes data storytelling…

A simple definition

“Do you want me to draw you a picture?”. Indeed, when a concept is difficult to understand, presenting it visually makes it much more affordable. The human brain is made up like this and processes images much faster than text!

Take the example of a 3,000-line Excel file. It contains vital information, but how do you get its intelligence from it? The Dataviz then makes it possible to aggregate millions of data (from companies or organizations such as INSEE) and visualize them through graphs, diagrams, maps, chronologies, pictograms, infographs or even unpublished graphic creations or photos. Data storytelling then succeeds in narrating this data in images, with a view to analysing it.

A bit of history

Several stages: :

As early as the end of the 18th century, the Scottish engineer and economist William Playfair created the histogram, the pie chart and the time series: visualizations that are still used today! Concrete examples arrive as early as the 19th century on subjects related to mortality and war…

Birth of a graphic language as early as 1967 thanks to Jacques Bertin, who was digging into ways of presenting information on graphs (colours, sizes, shapes).

The massive arrival of digital technology makes data storytelling a good thing. The amount of information to be analysed is high, and new ways of presenting information thanks to digital techniques optimise Dataviz (3D for example).

Today, data collection has been generalized to the whole company, and the analysis and transmission of the results remains a practice accessible to a simple minority of employees. Data storytelling thus makes it possible to democratize access to complex information in the company (and no longer only to the Business Intelligence department!).

Concrete applications

Data-storytelling is present in all organizations. There are many of them! Use of service, sales of a product, number of visitors to a site, fluctuations in a price… each sector of activity generates some, and the simple fact of creating an Excel table to order the data and draw conclusions is already part of Dataviz!

It will be useful to the trades related to these datas, which will then practice the “piloting by the data”. This allows a more precise decision making, which goes beyond human reasoning. It is thus possible to follow many key indicators simultaneously and to keep a broad vision of one’s activity.

But it also serves the general public! Generally to highlight data and educate consciences on subjects such as ecology, economy, synthesis of financial results?

The anecdote to know

The best-known data visualization dates back to the time of Napoleon. It denounces the absurdity of war. In 1812 Napoleon led the famous Russian campaign, more than 400,000 men set out to conquer Moscow. Only a quarter of the men reached the capital. Napoleon was forced to retreat, and a second trap closed in on the troops: the cold. Only a few thousand men crossed the border again… Charles Joseph Minard, a contemporary of the campaign, produced the map below several decades later.