The Basics of Data Storytelling

Let’s continue with Step 2 – Identify the points you want to emphasize from your data. The Data Storytelling is everywhere!. There are so many charts swirling around us, but many of them can be simply bucketed into 5 categories:

• COMPONENT COMPARE
• ITEM COMPARE
• TIME SERIES COMPARE
• FREQUENCY (DISTRIBUTION) COMPARE
• CORRELATION COMPARE

The Day-to-Day Life Examples of Time Series

Let’s continue with the third one – TIME SERIES COMPARE.

To easily illustrate from day to day life what does Time Series Comparison mean are the next examples:

PERSONAL HEALTH TRACKING

Fitness trackers and smartwatches record your daily steps, heart rate, or sleep quality. You can compare your daily step count. Additionally, examine your heart rate over weeks. By doing this, you can see trends like improvements in fitness or changes in sleep patterns.

WEATHER MONITORING

Weather apps show daily temperature, rainfall, or humidity. Comparing these values over days, weeks, or months helps you notice trends. For example, you notice warming weather as summer approaches. You can also detect rainfall patterns throughout the year.

STOCK MARKET WATCHING

Investors look at the price of a stock or an index (like the S&P 500) over days, months, or years. This lets them see if the value is trending up, down, or fluctuating, and make decisions accordingly.

MEDICAL MONITORING

Doctors check a patient’s vitals (like blood pressure or glucose levels) over several days or weeks. This monitoring helps identify trends, such as improvements or deterioration in health. They adjust treatment appropriately.

THE SUMMARY OF THE DAILY EXAMPLES

Summary

Anytime your story uses words like change, increase, decrease, grow, decline, fluctuate over time, etc., you can almost be sure that you will use charts in the TIME SERIES COMPARE section.