11. 6. Different factors

_ Tips for Finding the Sixth Data Story Type - Different Factors:_

This story type can be very simple, or it can be very complex, depending on the formula or calculation that lets you convert various factors, or inputs, to the output, or higher order phenomena. How do you find it in your data?

It’s helpful to start by asking yourself what elements or categories in the data are related. For a simple example, sales amount and return amount can be combined in a very simple way to create total sales amount: total amount = sales amount - return amount.

In a demographics scenario, overall population growth might be determined by a formula like this:
overall population growth = (births + immigrants) - (deaths + emigrants)

In relatively simple examples like these, consider visualizing each of the factors separately and then looking at the higher order effect to see how they might be related. Does one factor dominate the overall effect?

In more complex engineering or scientific scenarios, factors can combine together in very sophisticated ways to produce higher order effects such as global climate change, so these stories can become very involved.

Either way, enjoy breaking your data into parts and seeing how to piece them back together again! This is the skill required to find the 6th story type - different factors.