Importance of Story Telling in Data Science

“Those who tell the stories rule the world.”

-Hopi Indian Proverb

Story telling is considered the epitome of client influencing part in any business meeting, since it serves as a bridge between the client’s business expertise and the service provider’s technical expertise on a specific business problem.

“Story telling helps match narrative to the audience”

Story telling being one of the most critical component of any business success, is still in its infancy as there are no set rules and regulations on how to architecture an effective story telling lineup.

Before I go deep, let’s take a look at a snapshot of Ignaz Semmelweis. Ignaz Semmelwels was a Hungarian physician during 1 July 1818 to 13 August 1865. He has been widely described as the “saviour of mothers” due to one peculiar reason of being an early pioneer of antiseptic procedures. He introduced the principal of hand disinfection in obstetrical clinics, thereby reducing the cases of puerperal fever mortality (also known as “childbed fever”) to less than 1% of the earlier reported mortality rate.

Despite various publications of results where hand washing reduced mortality to below 1%, Semmelweis’s observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community.

Let’s take a look at where he missed to make a mark. Despite having accurate medical data for mortality, valuable and actionable insights, he could not succeed in convincing the medical community. The answer is the lack of a complete storyline around it.

We need to influence change with data stories:

• Narrative and Data combined help in explaining the situation.
• Visuals and Narrative help in engaging audience.
• Data and visuals combined help to enlighten the audience.

Hence all the three key points need to be meticulously designed so as to give the audience the best story telling experience.