MODERN BUSINESS
Figure 6
– they have had some involvement in working it out .
A data story is vulnerable in one way : it can be usurped by a better story . For example , in relation to the Norway story , what if scientists discovered that when humans are under extreme stress , we produce a chemical in our blood that reduces the likelihood of heart failure ? Then the story could become something like the following .
Before the war , Norwegians were a relatively relaxed population , and the incidence of heart disease increased on a par with other Western cultures . But when the war began , Norwegians ’ stress levels went through the roof . Their bodies produced heaps of chemical X , and heart disease almost disappeared . But when the war and its stresses ended , the Norwegians resumed their old stress-free lives , and rates of heart disease climbed again .
OK , it ’ s perhaps not the most compelling alternative story , but you get my meaning . A key story principle is that you can ’ t beat a story with fact . You can only beat it with a better story .
Stories of the past are often overtaken by new discoveries . Clearly , the founder of IBM couldn ’ t have imagined the scale of future technology when he predicted the world would only ever need a handful of computers .
THE EXPLANATION STORY When your analysis is not a time series , then your story could explain your insight . John Snow ’ s cholera map is a good example . On its own , without a story , the map lacks meaning . However , you could say it ’ s likely that on 28 August 1854 , the water pump on Broad Street became infected when the cesspool for the block overflowed because of broken brickwork . Houses on Broad Street fell first – as water was taken from the pump , you could see a fanning out of the disease and the resulting deaths in a radial pattern .
Interestingly , there were no deaths at the nearby brewery as everyone there drank beer to hydrate and they had their own well to take water from . The few other unaffected households in the area were discovered to prefer the water from a pump that was further afield and unaffected by cholera .
John Snow wrote extensively on how the disease spread in London and explained all the anomalies he found in the data . His story was a compelling account and , as I said earlier , it changed public health policy in England . As Steve Johnson , author of The Ghost Map18 and my source for John Snow ’ s epic data storytelling , has noted : “ It was going to take more than body counts to prove that the pump was the culprit behind the Broad Street epidemic . Snow was going to need footprints too .”
THE DISCOVERY STORY Sometimes you have to explain how a discovery was made for the audience
October 2016 ModernBusiness 33