In data science, where data becomes information becomes knowledge, there is no action until the knowledge becomes a story, and the story drives a decision. In software engineering, "story" is the important part of user story. In teams, stories drive the team dynamics. In leadership, stories drive buy-in and engagement. In informal education, the story drives the interest and curiosity.
In recognition of this, I am expanding my focus. At the old "Data Gorilla" blog, I wrote "Data Analysis, Statistics, Quality and Presentation" - and reading it, it was clear that I thought a well written and designed report, with insight and understanding of the data, was a good presentation.
Now, I see presentation as an art unto itself. After one has seen through the data, don't just show a chart, a map, the extracted knowledge and information. Maps are beautiful, intricate, informing - I love them. But tell a story, so we can feel the journey that the map represents. This is the art, that illuminates both the artifact you make, and the data artifacts, the landmarks, that guided your analytic journey. It is the emotion of a story that carries us from knowledge to wisdom.
To temper the tendency to extrapolate from a limited domain, I will include stories outside of data, and artifacts outside of analysis. The experience of being human, like the training of a model, is limited by it's input. And there may be an argument for a broader domain providing a more robust prior, but that sounds more like a Bayesian-Frequentist campfire debate than a welcome post.
Welcome to Art and Artifact!
Old posts remain archived at Data Gorilla.