Data Presentation for Analysts
Develop your communication skills to present your data in a clear and impactful way allowing your organisation to reap the full benefits of your work.
Description
- The way data is presented influences whether data is acted on or not.
- Clear and appropriate presentation makes the output of analytical work more accessible to the rest of the organisation.
- Proposals are more likely to be implemented if they are understood.
Learning objectives
- Understand the need to address the interests of the audience.
- Identify and understand your audience.
- Decide the message before creating a table or chart.
- Understand basic standards and best practice for charts and tables.
- Understand the importance and power of simplicity and focus.
- Improve the use of narrative and/or PowerPoint.
Topics
- Audiences, and how to characterise them.
- The difference between messages and analytical findings.
- The need for selectivity.
- Basic standards and best practice for constructing and presenting short tables to non-specialists.
- Basic standards and best practice for presenting simple graphs.
- The use and value of formatting, layout, rounding and aggregation, and some guidelines.
- Hints for narrative and/or PowerPoint.
Audience
Students are expected to understand very basic data analysis concepts and common methods of graphing. This should not be a problem for any OR analyst. A pdf reviewing these basics is provided in advance.
The course is designed for analysts and technical specialists who may need to report numerical or graphical information to non-specialists or to people who might be uncomfortable with numbers. It will be particularly beneficial to analysts early in their career but can also be useful for more experienced analysts.
Course format
- Powerpoint presentation to introduce the topics
- Case studies based on ‘real world’ problems
- Group discussion/work
- Bring questions from your own work to embed your learning
Related courses
- Art of Data Visualisation
- The Science of Data Visualisation
- Data Visualisation with Tableau