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Drawing Data with Dragons: Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic on Teaching Kids and Adults Alike
440 Plays11 hours ago
In this episode of the PolicyViz Podcast, Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic joins me to discuss the evolution of her work in data storytelling—from corporate workshops to her newest venture into children’s literature. We explore how the pandemic transformed training formats, the collaborative nature of her team, and the creative process behind her latest book, Daphne Draws Data. Cole reflects on the importance of introducing kids to the visual language of data early in life and shares how simple storytelling principles can empower learners of any age.
Keywords: data, data visualization, flourish, graphic design, how to, information design, graphic design tutorials, graphic design portfolio, graphic design course, online learning, graphic design photoshop, graphic design trends 2024, how to draw, data scientist, Federica fragapane, accurat, AccessibilityInDesign, EngagingVisuals, Inspiration, DataNarratives, VisualizationDesign, InstagramPortfolio, BehancePortfolio, mathematics, Al, machine learning
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Transcript
Introduction to Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic and Her New Book
00:00:13
Speaker
Welcome back the policy of this podcast. I'm your host to John Schwabisch. Once again, welcome back to the show. ah hope you are well. I hope the weather is beautiful where you are and you are getting some time to rest and relax.
00:00:25
Speaker
Maybe even listen to this podcast on your way to work or on a walk or during your workout, whatever it is. I appreciate you tuning in and checking out the show. On this week's episode of the show, I talked to my good friend Cole Nussbaum or Nathleck about her relatively new book. It's been out now for a few months, came out last fall.
00:00:43
Speaker
Daphne Draws Data, a storytelling with Data Adventure. Cole gets into the world of kids books, which is obviously very different than what she has been doing over the last several years, helping lots of people, especially adults, be better data communicators through her website and firm and podcast storytelling with data.
The Importance of Data Literacy for Children
00:01:06
Speaker
If you don't know Cole's name, well, you will after this episode. I really suggest you check it out. Cole has lots of great advice and tips and thoughts about how we can teach kids, both our own and others, ah how to be good data communicators, good data stewards.
00:01:22
Speaker
That is the world these kids are going to be living in, is data. So they need to be good data consumers and data producers. And so that's what this episode is all about. So I think you're gonna hear Cole talk about her work developing this book. I think you're gonna hear how her book kind of differs from several other books in this genre as it were.
00:01:43
Speaker
um And there are several others that you should try to check out when you have a chance. um But I think you're just gonna enjoy the conversation. Cole and I go way back. weve Cole's one of the first podcast guests on the show. So it's good to have her back.
00:01:55
Speaker
good to chat with her. Haven't been able to see her since I think maybe the pandemic. So it's been a while. um And so I think you're going to enjoy this week's episode of the show. So here we go. Here's my conversation with Cole about her new book.
Cole's Work in Data Communication Education
00:02:07
Speaker
Daphne draws data.
00:02:10
Speaker
Well, hello, Cole. Hi, John. It's been too long. Way too long. I feel like prior to the pandemic, we probably saw each other like in person like a couple times a year at least.
00:02:22
Speaker
It seems like it, yeah. Right? and then And then everything kind of fell off the edge of the, yeah. Just like everything took a like a sharp left turn. And now kids are much older. And um at least I have a few more ah lines around my eyes. I'm not sure you do. You look like we look like the same one i when I saw you a few years ago. Oh, so nice.
00:02:43
Speaker
So how are things? How's business? Let's start with business. How how are things there? Yeah, business is great. we are you know We've got a small but mighty team of people who are having a ton of fun teaching workshops to clients all around the world. So we spend a lot of time doing that and just creating content, right? So content across our blog and podcast and YouTube channel and books, which we'll talk more about. Yeah.
00:03:08
Speaker
So how do the workshops work for your folks? Do they, is it one sort of common curriculum that they're all teaching? And how do they like, do they, do they sort of vary it based on their own skills and interest in teaching?
00:03:23
Speaker
Well, this was one thing that was interesting because as the team was growing, one of our concerns is that you know the pads bifurcate at some point. And what starts out as the same workshop ends up being vastly different because everybody develops their own work. ways of framing things and examples and such.
00:03:42
Speaker
ah Turns out though that global pandemic and everything being pushed virtually and us always having two people on a virtual workshop, mainly at the beginning for technical issues, but then over time we found that the variety of voices helps hold people's attention.
00:04:01
Speaker
And the great effect that it's had is everybody's presenting together with each other. And so rather than things develop into, you know, what was once the same content that now is vastly different, everything's kind of grown together. And so we hear each other present and you know pick up good framing from one person and apply in another place. And so it's been a really nice organic way of everybody elevating each other and us continuing to refine and improve the content that we teach.
00:04:35
Speaker
And so when it comes to the actual workshops, we have a two hour, a four hour half day, which is the most popular, and then a full day. yeah And they typically cover ah the same lessons. So the two hour one will always cover the same lessons. But what we do is we solicit examples from the client group ahead of time and use that to understand how folks are visualizing and communicating with data currently, what challenges they're facing, and use that to customize where we might spend more time or less time and also use their examples as the basis for hands-on exercises so that we can show not only do these things work in general, ah but you can actually apply them to your and your colleagues' work, which is where I think the real
Formats and Benefits of Virtual Workshops
00:05:22
Speaker
magic happens. Because when it's applied to some other example, it's easy to say, oh, that works there. It doesn't work for our stuff. But when you see simple changes and how impactful they can be in terms of taking something that might have been
00:05:36
Speaker
complicated or confusing and making it clear and resonate that that really drives the lessons home. And it's a ton of fun for us because it means we are daily encountering new examples and thinking about how to teach and how to illustrate our teachings through different examples, which is fun for us too.
00:05:59
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Cause you get some time to actually like dig into something new, right. And make something. Yeah. Yeah. Are most of the workshops now, are they still virtual? Are they more in-person? It's a mix. pre-pandemic, we were entirely in-person. shifted to entirely virtual. And now we've got a healthy mix.
00:06:18
Speaker
And I definitely like credit the pandemic with... creating virtual for us because yeah i don't know that that's a space I would have explored otherwise because there's such magic that happens when you're in person.
00:06:29
Speaker
But there's some really interesting things that happen virtually as well. You know you can have the two voices as we talked about. it can actually, and this caught me by surprise and kind of continues to, but you the virtual learning environment can be strangely intimate when the instructor is looking straight at the camera because it feels to every participant as if they're being addressed directly.
00:06:50
Speaker
um We've noticed and gotten feedback that the virtual setting can also be great for groups of introverts or even mixed groups where the introverts have other ways to interact besides speaking out.
00:07:02
Speaker
They can interact in chat or signal things yeah in other ways. it's actually been really neat. And then, so now we have a mix where we're doing probably roughly half and half virtual sessions versus traveling to a client and teaching a person.
00:07:18
Speaker
Yeah, the the the chat is interesting, right? Because I have found that you can ask questions and you can kind of almost do like a casual poll, right? And you can sort of see all the answers sort of flow through and you can sort of, especially if it's just a binary yes, no, you can sort of see the results. Whereas like in person, you're asking people to raise their hands. You're still sort of eyeballing it. But like, yeah i just feel like in the chat, everybody sees all the yeses pop up and maybe they don't look around the room when they're in person.
00:07:45
Speaker
Well, as well as you figure you you have people who might be more inclined to participate in chat or be truthful and honest in chat where they yeah might not participate live. so you get ah you you get a different read from groups I think than you do live, which is interesting.
00:08:00
Speaker
I just, for me, the the hardest part is when people don't turn their cameras on and you're like, you feel like you're talking in a vacuum. Yeah. To yourself for hours. And it's just that, that, that part is rough. And well, and that for us is another reason to have two people on, because then even if, you know, and we always encourage people to turn on cameras, but you can only control so much because right It's amazing. It only takes very little like queuing, but if you can see somebody like smiling and nodding along, it just can provide so much energy and reinforcement. And so when we've got two people on something, we know at least, you know, there's the other person. Yeah. Which, yeah.
00:08:40
Speaker
i had ah I had a moment early in the pandemic where I was like, should make like a Brady Bunch style video of people just smiling and nodding that I could just play on top of the side of that Zoom. So like at least had someone, like a person look at rather than these black boxes, which are just, yeah, just kind of the worst.
00:08:58
Speaker
Yeah. Well, the classes are going good. The blog's been great. um You've got one new book out, very different than your other books. And then another book coming, which is very similar to your other books.
00:09:10
Speaker
Yeah, we can. yeah we can A little bit. of Okay.
Exploring 'Daphne Draws Data' and Its Educational Impact
00:09:12
Speaker
All right. So let's talk about the one that's out very different. um All about, and I can, I can see her up on the bookcase there behind you. So Daphne, the dinosaur.
00:09:23
Speaker
ah Oh, there you go. little plush for the YouTubers. Daphne is not a dinosaur, but a dragon. Oh, dragon. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, right? i shit They look similar.
00:09:33
Speaker
ah Dragon who loves to draw data. So yeah, very different audience than our typical business audience. But one of the things that was interesting to me is in writing for kids,
00:09:45
Speaker
It's the same lessons that we teach adults, just yeah presented maybe in a more colorful, ah illustrative fashion. But really for me, it was you know after teaching adults for so long and so commonly hearing the feedback of, ah, why didn't I learn this sooner?
00:10:04
Speaker
And then having my own growing kids and seeing... you know their innate curiosity and love of drawing that it seemed to me for a long time that we could be teaching the visual language of graphs and numbers much earlier than we typically do. and you know There's some graphs that I'd seen come home from my kids, but they were things like the weather in January in Wisconsin. like You don't need to graph that. We experienced that. It's cold and it's gray and that's not awesome.
00:10:36
Speaker
And so really turning it into something that kids can see as a superpower because it's answering a question that they didn't know the answer to for that. Or it's something about them and their habits that they could learn something from.
00:10:51
Speaker
And so I knew I wanted to do a children's book for right i wanted to do a children's book for a number of years before i knew what it was going to be. And then had had a notebook that I took everywhere with me and would jot down notes and was trying to figure out what it was going to look like and who the characters would be.
00:11:08
Speaker
And went down a number of paths that didn't play out until I landed on the dragon. And once that happened, it all kind of came together. ah And the premise of the book is Daphne is, she's dragon. She has a strange talent for drawing data.
00:11:25
Speaker
And so she gets made fun of by her brother for that not being dragon-y enough. And she goes on an adventure, in trying to find a place where she fits in.
00:11:36
Speaker
And so she goes to different places. She goes to the jungle and underwater and to outer space. And in each location, she makes some new friends and helps them solve a problem that they're facing by gathering and drawing data.
Nurturing Children's Interest in Data and Math
00:11:51
Speaker
So the story itself is... very light in terms of there's no technical jargon. oh She's drawing ah and ah it's super fun to read it out loud to kids because I'll put the illustrations up on the big screen and before she tells her, before Daphne tells her answer, I'll let the kids do it. And you know it's amazing. They shout out the answer because they can just see it when it's drawn intuitively.
00:12:17
Speaker
And then we do lots of fun, interactive things together, graphing data. But after the story ends, there is a graph glossary that gets into the more technical aspects of the four graphs that Daphne draws on her head adventures, line graphs, bar charts, pie charts, and scatter plots, and also has some ideas for activities that kids can do when it comes to gathering and drawing their own data.
00:12:43
Speaker
And then we've been putting together all of the ancillary resources for that. So at DaphneDrawsData.com, there are activities for kids, support for parents, resources for educators.
00:12:56
Speaker
We recently rolled out a data detectives program where we are seeking volunteers from around the world. So adults who care about this stuff, who might be interested in helping us bring it to more kids.
00:13:10
Speaker
So if you have a school in your area where you want to go and do one of these sessions and read the book and facilitate an activity. We'll give you all of the materials to do that.
00:13:21
Speaker
ah In some cases, even donating books where we can. and So really just trying to get the information out there because the superpower that kids can develop, right? Because as i talked about before, they've got you know They love asking questions. And for the most part, kids love drawing. And so if we can help them learn how to ask smart questions that they can then gather and draw data to answer, we can do some really cool things with that. And I think I love it as a creative way to get into math and numbers. It's not this strictly...
00:13:57
Speaker
things are right or things are wrong, right? You can approach things in different ways and creativity is welcome. It just, it offers another avenue into math and logical thinking that for me and what I've seen my kids go through feels like it's missing in classical education.
00:14:12
Speaker
Yeah. ah Yeah. I have this conversation with my kids who are a little older than yours about like, Why do we need to learn calculus? Like I'm never going to use calculus. It's like, yeah, there's some truth to that unless you're going to be an economist or an engineer, you know, probably not going to use calculus, but you, they should teach you stats, but okay. That's a whole other conversation. Well, I would even on the calculus it's because it's for me, you're looking back and granted I majored in math. So take that for from what it will, but you as far as there's a lot of calculus, lots of computer programming and what I take out of that, you know yeah, i did do some programming along the way in my career.
00:14:48
Speaker
But what I took more from any of that than the actual skills of being able to you know do differential equations or program something in C++, plus plus which i't even I think is completely debunk now.
00:15:02
Speaker
It's the way of breaking down a problem. putting it back together in a logical fashion, solving it. ah When things don't work out, knowing how to break it apart to figure out where it went wrong and try again, it's the logical thinking that goes along with it.
Teaching Basic Data Concepts and Innovative Methods
00:15:19
Speaker
And I think that's the piece that just, it gets, when it gets introduced, it gets introduced so much later yeah And in such an abstract way that I feel like we could feel like we could be more tangible with that or more concrete with that earlier on, that those building blocks could be there from the get-go and we could be making those connections explicit to kids of how this is going to help them so that it doesn't seem abstract or as abstract.
00:15:48
Speaker
Yeah. mean, there is an interesting movement in the K-12 world on data science for education that I think does focus more on the hands-on.
00:15:59
Speaker
um There's an interesting practice in high schools in, I believe it's Alabama, maybe it's Arkansas, but like approaching math in a different way that it's not about how do you multiply, you know, for example, 90 times, you know, 12, but how many different ways can you solve that question?
00:16:18
Speaker
Right. Like, right. And so there, there's just a very interesting, And there's some very interesting movements in the data science world. I think the the there's a code app tool from the Concord Coalition that is introducing kids to graphs and coding in kind of a different way. But I don't disagree with you that like calculus and other forms of math help you think or or structure your your thought process in maybe a linear sequential way. But I think like at the end of the day, if we want people to be good data stewards, data consumers every day, they should know what probability means. They should know what a variance means in standard deviation. I'm not sure an integral has the same day-to-day application as, you know, I'm not the K-12 educator, so I don't pretend, but like a parent, so I still have strong views on it. But anyway, okay, I want to get back to the book.
00:17:14
Speaker
So what I wanted to ask you And I remember you talking about this and writing a few blog posts in the process of of writing this. So um I wanted to ask you about the process of of writing this book and talking to parents. i mean, you're obviously a parent, but talking to parents and talking to teachers, like how is the process of writing a kid's book for you different than writing your your other the other storytelling with data books that are you know for adults and professionals?
00:17:40
Speaker
One thing, um this is maybe not directly in response. Well, your question makes me think of this, so I'll bring it up and then feel free to redirect me after this. But one thing I learned through the editing process and by soliciting feedback, you know one is you have to say things in many fewer words than you want to consider. at the point where I wrote Daphne Draws Data, the book prior to that storytelling with you was like approaching 80,000 Oh, wow. Yeah.
00:18:05
Speaker
oh wow yeah a picture book needs to be like at very max a thousand words and ideally a lot shorter than that. Daphne comes out, I think somewhere like seven, 800. um But so you've got to really simplify things. But with something like this, gotta be careful about oversimplifying, right? I wanted things to still be factual and complete.
00:18:24
Speaker
ah So that was one thing to balance. But one thing that was different is my business books have all been written in first person, present tense, right It's me talking to my reader And so an earlier iteration of Daphne was also written in that manner.
00:18:39
Speaker
And thank goodness for, i had, you know, a couple dozen people ah review and read it and give feedback ah early on, like before we illustrated or any of that.
00:18:50
Speaker
And I got this feedback from one person and it changed everything, which was, you know, this is a book that, adults will read aloud to kids. So it can't be first person present tense because the person reading is not a dragon going on an adventure today, right? It needs to be about the story that has happened historically. Well, it's one of those things that as soon as somebody says that you're like, of course, but it would have been so easy for me to miss if I hadn't gotten that
Creating Engaging Data-Centric Stories for Children
00:19:15
Speaker
feedback. So that was super helpful.
00:19:17
Speaker
um But yeah, it's just it's different in terms of, I think, the the level of the conversation. But as I mentioned before, one of the things that's interesting, maybe not surprising, is the things that Daphne does to her graphs. It's It's a lot of the same things that we teach. It's just, yeah you know, are using different language or she's approaching it differently. So, you know, and so if you want people to look at the one data point, instead of making the bar blue and the rest gray, like we might in storytelling with data land, Daphne's circling it with a pink crayon.
00:19:48
Speaker
yeah So it's just making yeah things, ah I guess, tie more closely to the audience in this case, like, you know, the six to nine year old crowd. Right.
00:19:58
Speaker
But the other thing I noticed when you described the book is that, um and this happens with with, I mean, I think really with lots of really good kids books is that there is another lesson sort of embedded in there, right? That um is about friendship or about respect or about being kind or whatever it is. And it sounds like the way you described it, that this story is about,
00:20:24
Speaker
you know, kind of Daphne's bravery and her sharing with friends and standing up for others. Like, did you have that intention at the beginning or is that something that sort of evolved over time?
00:20:36
Speaker
It definitely, it it evolved as the story through rounds of editing and figuring out. I knew that I wanted it to be ah sort of heroine's journey where she goes and learns something about herself and then comes back, right? Spoiler, but at the end, she comes back, realizes she can make friends by being herself, goes back, helps her brother with a problem.
00:20:57
Speaker
um But yeah, the the lesson of sort of leaning into what might seem like a quirky ah talent, I think was definitely an intentional part of it.
00:21:13
Speaker
um you know Clearly Daphne is intentionally a an empowered female going and and doing this. um Yeah, i had I had another thought that I was gonna go into after this and it just completely escaped me.
00:21:27
Speaker
It'll come back. It'll come back as soon as we hang up, it'll it'll come back, I'm sure. Did you, so you have three kids. Oh, I remembered what it is. If I could you on. No, go ahead, go ahead. now One of the neat things is, because it spans a nice range of kids. I think definitely target range is kind of third graders, so eight to nine year olds, but it can lean younger down to you know preschool, kindergarten, where to your point, it's more a story about friendship and being yourself and paying attention to the colorful pictures.
00:21:57
Speaker
But can go all the way up to, i went and talked to my son's sixth grade, ah the entire sixth grade at his school about it. And we read the book, which they they were as excited about the book, honestly, as like the second and third graders. But then we got to do some really fun graphing with teenage use of cell phones and like stuff that they cared about. And so it can kind of flex either way, depending on if you're paying more attention to the story or the graphs and the visualization and what you can do with those pieces.
00:22:29
Speaker
um So I wanted to ask, because you mentioned that Daphne is a female protagonist. You have three kids. You have a daughter. like ah I guess, like, did you model the character after either the kids? Did you have, like, did you have your kids in mind as like, hey like the under, like, I'm sure your kids are like my kids, right? They know all about data viz. They all know all about like good slides. Like they know all that.
00:22:55
Speaker
So, but for this sort of, this sort of secondary message, like, did you have them in mind as like, this is, this is how they'll read it. Not directly. So I mentioned that I'd gone down a lot of different paths and come back from.
00:23:09
Speaker
One of those streams was an adventure where ah basically my kids were the main characters and they helped a dragon ah with It ended up being like population dynamics and got way too complicated and way too long. But that was where the dragon... So yes, initially the kids were very much in the story. But then when I had the idea to turn the dragon into the main character...
00:23:37
Speaker
I think that fell away a bit. um But absolutely, the idea that you can use math as a superpower was core and intentional. I mean, i because you mentioned, yeah, we each have kids who have seen us work in the world of data their whole lives. But even with that, my third grader, so last year she was in second grade, she came home and she said,
00:23:59
Speaker
I don't like math. It's hard. was like, whoa, no like all children, you are not going to see this. And then it was shortly after that, that she came home saying, mom, we read a book about math.
00:24:09
Speaker
And I was like, that's fantastic. like What was it called? The book was called something like I'm learning to love math. And like this struck a chord with me. And I kind of went on a bit of a tirade and also an Amazon spiral of looking up this book. And then getting served up all of the other titles like this, which is just reinforcing this idea that math is hard and boring and complicated and for nerds. And I hate this yeah narrative.
00:24:34
Speaker
yeah And and it you it's portrayed in so many cases, right? Movies and books and he that that I think more than anything is what I'm trying to subvert with Daphne. Yeah.
00:24:49
Speaker
Yeah. My wife has a story about her third grade teacher, fourth grade teacher. ah and I won't say her name, even though I know her name, ah that that said to my wife, you're just not a math person.
00:25:01
Speaker
And that just, you know, that set her off that, you know, now she, you know, yeah you know that said, okay, you know, as a kid, you say, okay, remembers that today. And a teacher says, you're not a math person.
00:25:13
Speaker
And what is a kid what is a kid's reaction going to be to their teachers? They say, oh okay, the teachers must be right. I'm not a math person. So I'm not going to, try, I'm not going to have interest in it, and and all these sort of all these sort of things. And and and I'll just say before I put my foot too far in my mouth, she is amazing at lots of things. um and so But you know this this teacher like had this you know profound effect
Preview of Cole's Upcoming Book on Data Transformations
00:25:34
Speaker
on her.
00:25:34
Speaker
um Okay, so let's switch gears because you have that. Daphne came out when? Fall of last year. of last year, right. And now you have another book with some of the storytelling data team coming out when? This fall?
00:25:50
Speaker
Yes, September 2025. So the next book is Back to the Adult Audiences. And this one was different because I had the pleasure of writing it together with Mike Cisneros and Alex Velez.
00:26:04
Speaker
And it is a book that is entirely makeovers. And that's really, and we talked about this before, like that's the magic is when you see this happen to all these different examples. And so we've worked with thousands of clients over the past decade and have a ton of different examples to be able to pull from.
00:26:24
Speaker
And thought, you know, we'd like to share these in a, I guess, kind of a curated way. Let's pick some of our favorites and pick some of the things that are, i don't know, more gnarly than the straightforward, you know, declutter focus attention. Let's get into some real world stuff.
00:26:43
Speaker
And so we've, of course, anonymized everything, but the book is made up of 20 makeovers that are all inspired by true events. But where we start with the typical graph or slide or presentation and then take the reader through the process of what are we looking for? How are we looking at it? What changes are we making? What strategies are we applying? and taking them through that transformation so that they can see the impact in a lot of different cases. And so it crosses a lot of different industries, different types of data, ah different considerations when it comes to the scenario at play.
00:27:23
Speaker
And it's been it's been a really fun book to work on. yeah I'm guessing you've had the joy of going back to old projects that you haven't thought about in several years. you're like, oh yeah, I remember that was a good one. Yeah. yeah And the fun thing is because because we we see so many sometimes you go back and like, oh, that was really good.
00:27:39
Speaker
andre like, oh wait, I did that. I did a movie for that. um I know at least Mike and I have that reaction. Yeah. yeah Have you pulled from the storytelling with data community because, or examples in the community? Because I know ah at least for a while that there was like, um I still use one from Neil Richards did one on ah on an early one was like, you know, just annotate a simple chart.
00:28:06
Speaker
But like, are they, are they all, ah you said anonymized, so they're all anonymized from clients or do you have any from the community that people No, these are all these are all from client work and again, anonymized from client work. um But yeah, there was no shortage to pull from there. So we have to deal with these others.
00:28:23
Speaker
So when you anonymize it, you're anonymizing the data. Are you anonymizing? Like I can just imagine, you know, someone from the utility company in Minneapolis gave us this. Like in that case, do you just say... you know holy We're like swapping stuff around so that you know if you take if you take a given example that is from a client in a certain industry, it's this kind of data, it's going to be shown in this way in this circumstance, we're mixing and matching that across scenarios so that there's not going to be any sort of identifying. right
00:28:55
Speaker
um Or you know we're not giving away any secrets with what we're doing. So not only changing the numbers, but mixing and matching the costs. So that while inspired by true client events, that the the details have been changed.
00:29:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's the that's a tag as you open the book, inspired by true events. What happens with with the tools? Because a lot of, not a lot. There are not many books out there. The few books that go in sort of doing these redesigns, doing these makeovers, they tend to be focused on a specific tool.
00:29:26
Speaker
um Yeah. The makeovers themselves, yeah, pros and cons for short, the makeovers themselves are all tool agnostic, just just like our other books, where it's more the thought process and the strategies that you're employing that you can do in your tool of choice.
00:29:45
Speaker
uh the examples in the book were all done in our normal suite of excel and powerpoint because it's still what we find ourselves using the most with our clients and so we will likely be providing all of the downloads along with that for people that want to go in and see how things were done but it's not meant to be any sort of advertisement for powerpoint these are the tool is not the
Understanding Data Structure and Visualization Techniques
00:30:09
Speaker
lesson here. It's how do you get the, like, what should you be thinking about when it comes to those things. I'm with you on that one.
00:30:15
Speaker
so So let me ask this, because this is ah a topic that's come up a few times more recently. I talked to Enrico Bertini, I think maybe late last year. And one of the things we were talking about was um the sort of structure of data when it comes to creating visualizations. And I think a lot of us that are in the data visualization world, specifically in the and the sort of training and teaching, we kind of gloss over that whole process of data, getting the data and cleaning it and restructuring it to like make the graphs.
00:30:46
Speaker
So um maybe maybe the book isn't the right um forum for this, but so I'll ask this more generally, but Have you found yourself talking more to people or teaching people more about the underlying data itself, cleaning it and working with it and structuring it?
00:31:03
Speaker
We don't get into a ton of conversations on that because the examples that we get from our clients, typically they've already done that step. And so we're taking what they give us as, and we're assuming that's already been done in a yeah robust manner. We do get into a lot of conversations about it that come up through questions or as we're parsing the different examples. And so we're talking about that with groups, um but we don't get into that in the book specifically. Yeah, i I have found the same thing. I mean, I think the one thing that I've started to add to more like the hands on workshops of making things is just demonstrating the difference between a wide data set and a long data set and how to navigate between the two.
00:31:48
Speaker
I have found that most people just don't, maybe they instinctively, if they're if they've been working with data, they know the differences between the two, but they haven't really thought about, some of the tools want, like Tableau is a good example. Generally, not always. The Tableau people will come after me, but like not always, but oftentimes it wants the data in a long format.
00:32:05
Speaker
yeah um Flourish is a good example that for some graphs, it wants it wide, some graphs, it wants it long. And just that basic format non-trivial task of flipping between the two is kind of an important technique. And I haven't really started teaching that until, you know last year or two.
00:32:23
Speaker
Yeah. We often draw on the distinction between the exploration of data and the one explanation and do kind of the hand wavy, you've already explored it. You've learned what you're going to do And then now we're going to help you explain it. But yeah, these are all things that need tackled as part of that exploratory process.
AI's Role in Data Analysis and Future Plans
00:32:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:42
Speaker
So, um ah so we're about to run out of time, ah which is too bad because I have like nine other things on my list, but that's okay. um So have you found in the workshops and in the teaching and now with this, so this kind of a two-part question.
00:32:56
Speaker
Have you found people asking for different things, changes? I mean, we've been You and I have been doing this for 10, 15 years now. there's Are the questions evolving? Is that the... Yeah, the questions evolving. Yeah, that's good way to put it.
00:33:09
Speaker
um and And do you anticipate using this book in the workshops? The... Questions, I would say some evolve over time, and but I would say the majority of them are the same and have been the same for the past decade.
00:33:29
Speaker
When it comes to thinking about how to plan and the different strategies to employ, i think where things have evolved. So you know we can anticipate in anything we do now, we get some sort of question that has the AI bent yeah to it.
00:33:46
Speaker
I had to laugh because i even it was at the um the reading that I did at a bookstore on the day that Daphne Draws Data came out. And so this is like to an audience of children. right yeah Teddy, the third grader, he's in my daughter's class, raises his hand and asks an AI question.
00:34:05
Speaker
ah That's pretty great. But i think I think there's some really interesting things there. because oftentimes the question is something along the lines of, you know is AI going to make all of this moot and machines are going to do this for us? Which I actually is the wrong question to be asking.
00:34:18
Speaker
I think the interesting question is, because I think the answer there is no. And you know I caveat that maybe I'm naive, but I think we need our brains because we're the ones that actually have the context and know the people and can navigate these things.
00:34:31
Speaker
But I think the interesting question is, how can AI help us be more thorough, more robust, more consistent? Where is it going to help us do things that we just haven't had the person power to do before.
00:34:44
Speaker
So I get excited by things like qualitative analysis. like I remember being at Google and you know having to read through verbatim comments and try to code things and get sentiment, like what that all looked like to try to make sense.
00:35:00
Speaker
That sort of analysis with natural language models can be done in seconds, yeah And so when you think of the amount of additional insight that gives us from call logs and customer service complaints and like this whole host of things, I think there's really interesting new insight that we'll be able to get more quickly that we can use to just add another level of information.
00:35:25
Speaker
I don't know, understanding to everything that we're doing. i think also there's some really interesting ways, and actually this is maybe coming back to some of the underlying parts of your questions about the exploring data, but how do we make sure we're doing this in a smart way and that we're not being biased in ways that we're not...
00:35:43
Speaker
ah that we're not cognizant of. And you know how do we anticipate questions? like AI can be a great brainstorming partner on these sorts of things that can actually help us be a lot more robust in how we're working with data, I think can be cool Um, so yeah, I wish questions would evolve a little more than they have, but they'll get Yeah. I know. I think that's right.
00:36:05
Speaker
Well, on that note of future looking, um, thanks so much for coming on. Um, let's, uh, remind folks if you can, where they can find you, yes get involved in the community. Storytellingwithdata.com is where you'll find everything adult facing. So you find information on our trainings and workshops. I'll just mention on the workshop piece, we have upcoming master classes. Those are full day sessions that anyone can register for in person in London at the end of April and in New York City in October.
00:36:36
Speaker
we also have an eight week course, the next cohort starting in September. and we have books and podcasts and YouTube channel and community and all those good things. All of that's at storytellingwithdata.com.
00:36:48
Speaker
Everything Daphne and kids related is at DaphneDrawsData.com. Well seen. Cole, always a pleasure. Thank you much for coming on the show. Great to chat with you, John. I'll talk to you great.
00:37:05
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in, everybody. I hope you enjoyed that episode of the show. I hope you'll take a moment, just rate a review this show. And wherever you are listening to your podcasts, be it iTunes or be it Spotify or be it just on Zencaster, really do appreciate the feedback. It gives me a little, those warm, glowy feelings on the inside when I see people giving it a little five-star review.
00:37:25
Speaker
So I hope you enjoyed this week's episode of the show. i hope you will check out the next episode and the previous several hundred episodes of the show. So until next time, this has been the PolicyViz Podcast.
00:37:36
Speaker
Thanks so much for listening.