Data Storytelling in Video

I’m not a fan of video. I don’t spend time randomly surfing YouTube, and when given the choice between reading an article and watching a video, I’ll read. The reason is that videos often don’t work well for me: they’re too fast or too slow, they take a long time to get to the point, they don’t let me skip around and browse easily. I’d rather be in control than having the information pre-packaged for me. But two examples have surfaced in the last few days that show data visualization can tell a very effective story in well-designed, well-paced videos.

This video called Inequality in America has made the rounds on social media in the last few days, and as of this writing has over three million views. This is a great example of how you walk people through a fairly complex set of data and explain things like quintiles quite clearly. Sure, it’s not high-dimensional or Big Data, but it’s complex enough that many people will struggle understanding it (comparing distributions is hard).

The video is paced well and has a nice dramatic structure: not all is revealed right away, so it builds the story up nicely and then makes its main point close to the end. This level of clarity would be needed for a lot more information, and it’s a shame that there aren’t many more examples like this.

The Economist just released a “video chart” about music sales. [...]