There is an overabundance of information available through countless sources on the web. We need ways to make sense of it. Curation is one such way. Another is the art of storytelling with data. Here are eight excellent examples of storytelling with data, and more in this Forbes article. A strong proponent of using data to tell stories was Eva Saulitis, who dedicated her life to attempting to save Chugach transiient Orcas from extinction.

Dollar Street is one of the most impactful projects utilizing storytelling with data. Part of Gapminder.org, Dollar Street takes us on a walk down a virtual ‘street’ to peek inside people’s homes and see how they really live. For Dollar Street, people photograph the details of various homes around the world, showing close ups of everything from refrigerators, to gardens and toilets, thereby providing a peek into the lives of impoverished people in a way that is way more complete than, for example, a typical ad for a third world charity.

Visitors to the site are able to control what they look at, comparing different geographic regions and socio-economic brackets in a way that is clear, simple, easy to navigate and ultimately extremely enlightening.