Fact & Fiction: Why Data Insights Mirrors Literary Analysis with Rob Burgess

At first glance, you might think of literary analysis and data analysis to be worlds apart. The former looks at how narratological devices like character, plot and language create meaningful messages to audiences, and exists in the realm of fiction. The latter is about drawing knowledge from what has happened in the ‘real’ world, and therefore what is ‘fact’.

But what is the difference between fact and fiction, if not just two foundations for storytelling?

Rob Burgess is a Data Visualisation Designer at the John Lewis Partnership with a specialism in producing data-driven visuals and infographics. Starting out writing fiction, Rob now brings customer insight to life by playing on the strengths of both visual and verbal mediums to communicate data stories.

We unravel how truth is something we construct from interpreting stories, whether those stories are factual or fictional, and why both literary texts and datasets offer a multitude of readings. Rob proposes a triangular relationship in which data, pictures and words rotate in competition, one always beating the next for the prize in how to tell the best story. And we explain why curiosity into the unknown and an expansive imagination is what makes the fun of analysing both literature and data pretty similar after all.

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