I'm not a numbers person How to make good decisions in a data-rich world

Life in the 21st century dictates that you need to know your numbers and use them to improve your decision-making and enhance your impact.

From organizing the home budget, tracking health, understanding social media metrics, to running multi-national, multi-million-dollar organizations, it is no longer acceptable to claim ‘but I’m not a numbers person’ and believe that it is someone else’s job. Data is everywhere. Smart watches track our steps, heart rate, and blood-oxygen levels, social media platforms recommend people we might know and products we might like, and map applications on our phones suggest when we should leave home, taking into consideration where our next appointment is and what the traffic is like.

Dr. Selena Fisk believes that the data-informed can use the numbers in conjunction with an understanding of contexts, people, and different situations, to lead change and make shifts in what they do. This book steps through the ‘why’ of data and the types of data we often see and use through three key areas: data literacy, data visualization, and data storytelling.

Dr. Selena Fisk is a data storyteller coach and consultant who is passionate about helping others sort through the ‘numbers’ to tell the real stories, make better-informed decisions and lead positive change. She fiercely advocates for a world in which we are all data-informed, not data-driven. Selena has mentored executive, senior, and middle leaders, as well as hundreds of others in data storytelling, which has positively impacted the organizations in which they work.

Chapter 1: Why data?
Evidence versus action

Chapter 2: Thinking about data
Cognitive biases
Grittiness
Evolving intelligence
Seeing the positives
Slow and deliberate thinking
Point-in-time versus longitudinal data

Chapter 3: Types of data
Payroll and financial
Expenses
Social media
Website and Google analytics information
Triangulating data

Part 2

Chapter 4: Data literacy
Quantitative data
Qualitative data
Choosing the right data

Chapter 5: Data visualisation
Reading the visualisations that you have
Developing your own visualisations
Which visualisation is best?

Chapter 6: Data storytelling
Knowing which data to choose for data storytelling
Establishing the trends in the data
So what?

Conclusion

References