16: Storytelling with Data

Content for Wednesday, May 27, 2026

Before class

📖 Readings:

NoteAssignment 7 was due Sunday

Assignment 7: Joins & Missing Data — due Sunday, May 24 at 11:59 PM. If you haven’t submitted, do so as soon as possible.

During class

We’ll cover:

  • Why storytelling? Data + visuals + narrative = change
  • Same finding, five audiences: walking one dataset (sleep & GPA in college students) through five different deliverables — exploratory, journal/APA, clinician one-pager, social card, conference talk slide
  • The annotation toolkit: annotate(), geom_text() direct labels, geom_vline(), shaded regions, text-as-data with theme_void()
  • Misleading figures: truncated axes, implied thresholds, and where audience-tailoring crosses into deception
  • Sequencing: one figure shows a finding; a sequence makes an argument. Paper vs. talk sequencing for your final project
  • A brief tour of famous data stories (Nightingale, Minard, Rosling)
TipAssignment 8 is assigned today

Assignment 8: Storytelling Report — due Sunday, May 31 at 11:59 PM.

Slides

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After class

✅ Practice:

  1. Pick one figure from a recent assignment or your final project draft. Identify two distinct audiences for it (e.g., your professor and your roommate, or a journal reviewer and a press release reader).
  2. Produce two versions of the figure, each shaped for one of those audiences.
  3. Use at least two annotation techniques from class — for example, direct labels with geom_text() + sprintf(), a reference line with geom_vline(), a shaded region with annotate("rect"), or text-as-data with theme_void().
  4. Write a one-sentence title for each version that makes an assertion, not a description (e.g., “CBT reduces depression more than control” rather than “Depression scores by condition”).
  5. Show both versions to someone outside the class — can they tell which is which?
NoteAsk “who’s reading?” first

A figure is an argument made for a specific reader. The same finding becomes a different figure for a researcher, a clinician, a member of the public, or a live audience.

Before you ask “what’s the chart?” ask “who’s reading?” The answer should shape every choice — title, annotation, color, what gets dropped.

Handout

The APA figure formatting guidelines handout is available in the course files. It covers journal-specific formatting conventions for reference — but remember, the core principles of good visualization apply everywhere.