Start With What Inspires, Entertains, Engages, Drives Curiosity

"I work with data here and there, but I really want to up my game...where should I start?" This is a question people constantly ask me. Where to begin?

Usually, the question they think they're asking is "what book should I read?" (my answer on that one is here) or "what tools should I use?" (no single answer will do, but here's part of an answer) and really, like every other question in data visualization, the answer is "it depends".

But I do have a more specific answer that is pretty solid. Whatever books you read, courses you take, tools you learn...the most important thing is to do the work. You need to go find some data and play with it. The more you play with data, the better you'll get at finding insights in that data and at communicating those insights with an audience.

OK, so, "where can I find some data?", people will ask next. For that, I have one vague and one specific answer.

Vague Answer

Think about what inspires, entertains, engages, interests, drives curiosity in you. And find data related to that. Love movies? Go to IMDB and find some data. Like sports? There's tons of sports data. Like economics or public policy? There are megatons of public data sets from governments and NGOs around the world. You can get lost for months in the U.S. public data resources or the World Bank's incredible collection of data, for example.

Hey, that vague answer got a bit specific, actually!

Also Specific Answer

Two of my favorite resources for data sets are FiveThirtyEight and Kaggle. Each has a collection of data that is diverse and you're likely to find something in there that you can relate to. The nice thing about FiveThirtyEight is that each data set has been used to create a data story that you can read to see how they found and expressed stories with the data. When you're just starting out, this can help you understand what can be done, and can help inspire you. The Kaggle collection is enormous, but includes a good search engine to narrow your selection set effectively.

Just find some data that is interesting, and that's the perfect place to start doing this work. If you're truly interested, you'll be curious, questions will spark more questions, insights will jump out that you're excited to share, which will lead you to a data story that will be interesting to an audience like you!

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Learn more about data storytelling and visualization via my other LinkedIn Learning courses.