TycheManual:Findings
After your analysis you’re ready to think about the preliminary punchlines. As we will point out in numerous places a data story does not need to be an exposé. Rather a data story should inform, educate and have a reader walk away feeling smarter.
Let’s use an example. If you live in a city you may know that a portion of your taxes are spent on road construction, fixing potholes and installing sidewalks, however you (and likely most people) have no idea what the expense size looks like. You acquire budget and spending data to analyze. Through some analysis you find out that 8% of last year’s city budget was spent on this infrastructure and this year’s budget allocates 10% for infrastructure. This aligns with the newly elected mayor’s stated commitment to fixing this issue. In storytelling you may focus on a few things:
- we don’t get great infrastructure for free
- we have made budgetary tradeoffs to support a growing spend
- we can align a budget commitment with what an elected official is saying.