‘175 Zettabytes By 2025’ reads a Forbes headline from 2018, followed by ‘that’s how much data IDC estimates will be generated annually by 2025’. Evidently, Big Data is about to get a whole lot bigger, and the human race is already caught in a game of chase trying to identify patterns and correlations in the millions of data points collected daily. But how does one successfully harvest, analyse, and simplify unfathomable amounts of data in a way that makes sense? Enter Sejal Vora’s The Power of Data Storytelling, a book that aims to provide a comprehensive guide on the art of data storytelling for its readers. ‘Data is only as good as the decisions it enables one to make,’ says Vora in the introduction. With this insight in mind, the book takes the reader through a step-by-step process of finding, building and presenting an interesting story out of unappetizing data.
The concept of ‘data storytelling’ is a relatively recent addition to corporate jargon, with the first book on the subject written by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic published in 2015. In the book titled Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals, Knaflic introduces the world to the wonders of communicating data insights in a way that is meaningful and memorable. Data storytelling is a powerful tool that can help us make better decisions, understand complex concepts, and illustrate trends or patterns in data.