05. 1. Change over time

Here is an image of a Tableau Dashboard depicting a Change Overtime story.

At first blush, it seems like these story types are useful for telling a story with your data, and that seems obvious. But there’s a second use for these story types that is perhaps even more powerful:
** Finding the story in your data!**

The scenario goes like this. You have been given or come across a data set that you’ve never seen before. You don’t know what you will find when you explore this data set, and you don’t know what interesting insights you will want to present to your audience. How do you proceed?

As a part of an EDA (exploratory data analysis) process, you can add a phase where you ask yourself whether you can find each of these eight types of stories in the data, and if so, whether each story has merit and relevance to your situation.

Specifically, start with the first story type. Is there a “change over time” story in this data set? Find the _ date & time calendar variables_ and create timelines of the most important measures, aggregating the data in different ways. Did you find an interesting story? Did something reveal itself to you? If so, take note, and move on to the second data story type, repeating the process.

When you’ve gone through all eight story types, you’ll have a list of interesting insights to share, and you’ll be able to piece them together to tell a fascinating data story to your audience.