Let's tell a story

1. Let's tell a story

Welcome back! Now that we've practiced the first component of the data storytelling workflow, it's time to dive deeper into our dataset.

2. Explore your dataset

Just as two people might introduce themselves when first meeting each other, you want to get acquainted to your dataset once you're ready for analysis. You will aim for three levels of understanding: understanding individual variables, understanding relationships between variables, and understanding what is not there. How heavily you rely on each one of these will depend on your specific question. As this is an ample task, it involves having relevant knowledge about the question domain, sometimes creating new variables for your dataset and sometimes using more sophisticated models aided by statistics. For now, let's get to know our dataset a little bit better.

3. Departments

Let's talk about the department and region variables. Colombia has an administrative division consisting of 32 departments and the capital district of Bogotá, located in the middle of the country. The towns and cities within those same departments are referred to as municipalities.

4. Regions

Sometimes, the country's departments are grouped into regions. In the case of the green businesses dataset, these are the following: The Pacific and Amazon regions are located in the southwest and southeast, respectively. The Coffee Belt and Antioquia region is located in the central part of the country and is known for its coffee production. The Central region is located in the middle of the country and includes the capital district of Bogotá. The Caribbean region is located in the north and is known for its beaches and coastal cities. The Santanderes region is located in the northeast and includes the departments of Norte de Santander and Santander. The Llanos region is located in the east and is known for its vast plains. We'll experiment with grouping some variables according to departments and regions throughout the chapter.

5. Categories and sectors

As mentioned before, the businesses are also classified according to the economic activity they develop. The following are the categories and sectors for which there were verified green businesses in Colombia. First, the sustainable goods and services category includes sectors like sustainable agrosystems, biocommerce, sustainable agroindustry, and restoration businesses. Second, the Industrial eco-products category includes sectors like Waste recovery and valorization, Sustainable construction, Non-conventional renewable energy sources, and sustainable transportation. Finally, the Carbon markets category only includes the voluntary market sector in this dataset. This is not the full space of possibilities. There are more sectors than shown here. However, these are the ones that actually appear in our data.

6. Evaluating the results

Let's talk about the result variable. Based on 12 evaluation criteria defined by the Ministry of the Environment, the green businesses are classified according to the percentage of indicators they successfully achieve. This compliance level goes from "initial" (when they achieve fewer than 10% indicators) and "ideal" (from 90% to 100%).

7. Let's practice!

Woah! That was a lot of information about green businesses in Colombia. Don't worry, we'll go step by step in the next exercises to create your data storytelling product.

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