Download or read book Narrative and Numbers written by Aswath Damodaran and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-10 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can a company that has never turned a profit have a multibillion dollar valuation? Why do some start-ups attract large investments while others do not? Aswath Damodaran, finance professor and experienced investor, argues that the power of story drives corporate value, adding substance to numbers and persuading even cautious investors to take risks. In business, there are the storytellers who spin compelling narratives and the number-crunchers who construct meaningful models and accounts. Both are essential to success, but only by combining the two, Damodaran argues, can a business deliver and sustain value. Through a range of case studies, Narrative and Numbers describes how storytellers can better incorporate and narrate numbers and how number-crunchers can calculate more imaginative models that withstand scrutiny. Damodaran considers Uber's debut and how narrative is key to understanding different valuations. He investigates why Twitter and Facebook were valued in the billions of dollars at their public offerings, and why one (Twitter) has stagnated while the other (Facebook) has grown. Damodaran also looks at more established business models such as Apple and Amazon to demonstrate how a company's history can both enrich and constrain its narrative. And through Vale, a global Brazil-based mining company, he shows the influence of external narrative, and how country, commodity, and currency can shape a company's story. Narrative and Numbers reveals the benefits, challenges, and pitfalls of weaving narratives around numbers and how one can best test a story's plausibility.

Download or read book Financialization and Strategy written by Julie Froud and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-04-18 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considering the recent impact of the capital market on corporate strategy, this text analyzes, through argument and supportive case studies, how pressures from the capital bull market of the 1990s and bear market of the early 2000s, have reshaped management action and calculation in large, publicly quoted US and UK corporations. Beginning with the dissatisfaction with classical strategy and its limited engagement with the processes of financialization, the book moves on to cover three detailed company case studies (General Electric, Ford and GlaxoSmithKline) which use long run financial data and analysis of company and industry narratives to illustrate and explore key themes. The book emphasizes the importance of company and industry narrative, while also analyzing long term financial results, and helps to explain the limits of management action and the burden of expectations placed on corporate governance. Presenting financial and market information on trajectory in an accessible way, this book provides a distinctive, critical social science account of management in large UK and US corporations, and it is a valuable resource for students, scholars and researchers of business, management, political economy and non-mainstream economics. short listed for the 2007 IPEG Book Prize

Download or read book Narrative by Numbers written by Sam Knowles and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-03-19 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the Business Book of the Year Awards in the Sales and Marketing category. As jobs become increasingly similar, there are two skills that everyone needs if they’re going to thrive. These are the ability to interrogate and make sense of data, and the ability to use insights extracted from data to persuade others to act. Analytics + storytelling = influence. Humans are hardwired to respond to stories and story structure. Stories are how we make sense of and navigate the world. We respond best to stories that are based on evidence. But storytellers need to use data as the foundation of stories, not as the actual stories themselves. To be truly impactful, rational facts need to be presented with a veneer of emotion. The Big Data revolution means more data is available than ever. The trouble is, most people aren’t very numerate or good at statistics. Many find it hard to look at data and extract insights. Meanwhile, those for whom numbers hold no fear don’t always make the best storytellers. They mistakenly believe they need to prove their point by showing their workings. There are some simple and effective rules of data-driven storytelling that help everyone tell more compelling, evidence-based stories, whoever they need to convince. Narrative by Numbers shows you how.

Download or read book Numbers and Narratives in Bangladesh s Economic Development written by Rashed Al Mahmud Titumir and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-03-26 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on socio-economic developments of Bangladesh by challenging the dominant international narrative of the case being termed as “development surprise”, “development paradox” or “development conundrum,” given the absence of good governance. In doing so, the book examines the political economic dynamics and offers valuable insights into the current state of the Bangladeshi economy in light of stability, transformability and sustainability. Pointing to the ‘high’ rate of growth in gross domestic product (GDP) in Bangladesh, there is wide belief that economic growth can be obtained even without functioning institutions, and is more important than an inclusive political system. Advocates go on to argue that authoritarianism may be condoned as long as a steady course of development is perused. However, the inadequacy of comparative analysis in to the state of the economy of Bangladesh vis-à-vis other relevant economies makes such claims myopic and parochial. This book thus investigates the numbers and narratives to ascertain the validity of such assertions and lamentations by looking at the necessary and sufficient conditions of development. The necessary conditions imply an incisive inquiry into the factors of economic growth— land, labour, capital and technology while sufficient conditions warrant a penetrating incisive inquiry into the factors of economic growth— land, labour, capital and technology. As such, the book explores development by drawing variables of politics and economics to find out a causal relationship, and interjects these variables have on themes such as growth, agriculture, manufacturing industry, financial sector, health, education, poverty and inequality.

Download or read book Numbers Don t Lie written by Vaclav Smil and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Vaclav Smil is my favorite author… Numbers Don't Lie takes everything that makes his writing great and boils it down into an easy-to-read format. I unabashedly recommend this book to anyone who loves learning."--Bill Gates, GatesNotes From the author of How the World Really Works, an essential guide to understanding how numbers reveal the true state of our world--exploring a wide range of topics including energy, the environment, technology, transportation, and food production. Vaclav Smil's mission is to make facts matter. An environmental scientist, policy analyst, and a hugely prolific author, he is Bill Gates' go-to guy for making sense of our world. In Numbers Don't Lie, Smil answers questions such as: What's worse for the environment--your car or your phone? How much do the world's cows weigh (and what does it matter)? And what makes people happy? From data about our societies and populations, through measures of the fuels and foods that energize them, to the impact of transportation and inventions of our modern world--and how all of this affects the planet itself--in Numbers Don't Lie, Vaclav Smil takes us on a fact-finding adventure, using surprising statistics and illuminating graphs to challenge conventional thinking. Packed with fascinating information and memorable examples, Numbers Don't Lie reveals how the US is leading a rising worldwide trend in chicken consumption, that vaccination yields the best return on investment, and why electric cars aren't as great as we think (yet). Urgent and essential, with a mix of science, history, and wit--all in bite-sized chapters on a broad range of topics--Numbers Don't Lie inspires readers to interrogate what they take to be true.

Download or read book Stories Changing Lives written by Corinne Squire and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-12-11 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The seeds of the book were sown by a number of events, beginning over a decade ago, which foregrounded questions around the relationship between narrative and social change. The Centre for Narrative Research (CNR) at the University of East London hosted two international conferences on 'Narrative and social change' and 'Narrative and social justice', in 2007 and 2009; these topics were selected for sponsorship by the British Psychological Society's Qualitative Methods section. The 2012 Narrative Innovations summer school in Prato, Italy, organized by CNR alongside narrative researchers from Monash University, Australia, and Linkoping University, Sweden, which brought together graduate students from many countries, pointed up young narrative researchers' growing interests in social change. CNR and other narrative researchers' life story work with refugees, starting in 2015 in the so-called 'Jungle' refugee camp, in Calais, northern France (Africa et al., 2017), was an attempt to act on our social change interests in a more applied way. This work strengthened some of our ideas about the value of even minimal possibilities around personal narrative, as Bhabha's (2010) formulation of the 'right to narrate' suggests. A series of UK National Centre for Research Methods-funded events, in 2016, involving CNR, the Thomas Coram Research Unit at University College London, Edinburgh University's Centre for Narrative and Auto/biographical Studies, and visiting colleagues from South Africa and the US, also contributed to the book's making, by exploring participatory narrative research, addressing the involvement of research participants alongside researchers in all steps of the research, from defining research problems and doing the research, through to analysis, writing up and research dissemination"--

Download or read book Who s Counting written by John Allen Paulos and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-09-15 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades, New York Times best-selling author John Allen Paulos has enlightened readers by showing how to make sense of the numbers and probabilities behind real-world events, political calculations, and everyday personal decisions. Who’s Counting? features dozens of his insightful essays—original writings on contemporary issues like the COVID-19 pandemic, online conspiracy theories, “fake news,” and climate change, as well as a selection of enduring columns from his popular ABC News column of the same name. With an abiding respect for reason, a penchant for puzzles with societal implications, and a disarming sense of humor, Paulos does in this collection what he’s famous for: clarifies mathematical ideas for everyone and shows how they play a role in government, media, popular culture, and life. He argues that if we can’t critically interpret numbers and statistics, we lose one of our most basic and reliable guides to reality.

Download or read book Effective Data Storytelling written by Brent Dykes and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Master the art and science of data storytelling—with frameworks and techniques to help you craft compelling stories with data. The ability to effectively communicate with data is no longer a luxury in today’s economy; it is a necessity. Transforming data into visual communication is only one part of the picture. It is equally important to engage your audience with a narrative—to tell a story with the numbers. Effective Data Storytelling will teach you the essential skills necessary to communicate your insights through persuasive and memorable data stories. Narratives are more powerful than raw statistics, more enduring than pretty charts. When done correctly, data stories can influence decisions and drive change. Most other books focus only on data visualization while neglecting the powerful narrative and psychological aspects of telling stories with data. Author Brent Dykes shows you how to take the three central elements of data storytelling—data, narrative, and visuals—and combine them for maximum effectiveness. Taking a comprehensive look at all the elements of data storytelling, this unique book will enable you to: Transform your insights and data visualizations into appealing, impactful data stories Learn the fundamental elements of a data story and key audience drivers Understand the differences between how the brain processes facts and narrative Structure your findings as a data narrative, using a four-step storyboarding process Incorporate the seven essential principles of better visual storytelling into your work Avoid common data storytelling mistakes by learning from historical and modern examples Effective Data Storytelling: How to Drive Change with Data, Narrative and Visuals is a must-have resource for anyone who communicates regularly with data, including business professionals, analysts, marketers, salespeople, financial managers, and educators.

Download or read book Strategic Narratives written by Alister Miskimmon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-18 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Communication is central to how we understand international affairs. Political leaders, diplomats, and citizens recognize that communication shapes global politics. This has only been amplified in a new media environment characterized by Internet access to information, social media, and the transformation of who can communicate and how. Soft power, public diplomacy 2.0, network power – scholars and policymakers are concerned with understanding what is happening. This book is the first to develop a systematic framework to understand how political actors seek to shape order through narrative projection in this new environment. To explain the changing world order – the rise of the BRICS, the dilemmas of climate change, poverty and terrorism, the intractability of conflict – the authors explore how actors form and project narratives and how third parties interpret and interact with these narratives. The concept of strategic narrative draws together the most salient of international relations concepts, including the links between power and ideas; international and domestic; and state and non-state actors. The book is anchored around four themes: order, actors, uncertainty, and contestation. Through these, Strategic Narratives shows both the possibilities and the limits of communication and power, and makes an important contribution to theorizing and studying empirically contemporary international relations. International Studies Association: International Communication Best Book Award

Download or read book Altman and After written by Peter F. Parshall and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2012-06-21 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In American cinema, films with multiple plots can be traced back to Grand Hotel in 1932, but the form was used only sporadically in subsequent decades. However, filmmakers of the 1970s and 80s, notably Robert Altman and Woody Allen, repeatedly employed complex narratives to weave sprawling stories in their films. Later filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, Wong Kar-Wai, Steven Soderbergh, and Paul Haggis embraced multiple plotlines, a device that eventually achieved mainstream respectability in such Oscar winners as Traffic and Crash. In the past two decades, more than 200 films utilizing some variation of this format have appeared worldwide. In Altman and After: Multiple Narratives in Film, Peter Parshall carefully examines films that feature various plotlines. Parshall asserts that although this form may lose some of the close psychological identification and forward drive of linear narratives, such films gain a corresponding strength by developing thematic relationships in the various story lines. In each of these chapters, Parshall examines a different example of the multi-plot form, such as network narrative and the multiple-draft narrative, demonstrating that the structure of each is central to their artistry. He also argues that these devices open up a variety of creative vistas, a strength that appeals to directors and audiences alike. Films studied in this book include Nashville, Pulp Fiction, Amores Perros, Code Unknown, The Edge of Heaven, Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, The Double Life of Veronique, and Run Lola Run. A long overdue examination of this unique cinematic form, Altman and After will appeal to scholars, students, and fans eager to learn more about complex-narrative films.

Download or read book The Seven Basic Plots written by Christopher Booker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2005-11-11 with total page 737 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This remarkable and monumental book at last provides a comprehensive answer to the age-old riddle of whether there are only a small number of 'basic stories' in the world. Using a wealth of examples, from ancient myths and folk tales via the plays and novels of great literature to the popular movies and TV soap operas of today, it shows that there are seven archetypal themes which recur throughout every kind of storytelling. But this is only the prelude to an investigation into how and why we are 'programmed' to imagine stories in these ways, and how they relate to the inmost patterns of human psychology. Drawing on a vast array of examples, from Proust to detective stories, from the Marquis de Sade to E.T., Christopher Booker then leads us through the extraordinary changes in the nature of storytelling over the past 200 years, and why so many stories have 'lost the plot' by losing touch with their underlying archetypal purpose. Booker analyses why evolution has given us the need to tell stories and illustrates how storytelling has provided a uniquely revealing mirror to mankind's psychological development over the past 5000 years. This seminal book opens up in an entirely new way our understanding of the real purpose storytelling plays in our lives, and will be a talking point for years to come.

Download or read book The Dark Side of Valuation written by Aswath Damodaran and published by FT Press. This book was released on 2009-06-19 with total page 600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renowned valuation expert Aswath Damodaran reviews the core tools of valuation, examines today’s most difficult estimation questions and issues, and then systematically addresses the valuation challenges that arise throughout a firm’s lifecycle in The Dark Side of Valuation: Valuing Young, Distressed and Complex Businesses. In this thoroughly revised edition, he broadens his perspective to consider all companies that resist easy valuation, highlighting specific types of hard-to-value firms, including commodity firms, cyclical companies, financial services firms, organizations dependent on intangible assets, and global firms operating diverse businesses. He covers the entire corporate lifecycle, from “idea” and “nascent growth” companies to those in decline and distress, and offers specific guidance for valuing technology, human capital, commodity, and cyclical firms. ·

Download or read book Still Lives written by Jonathan Cole and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2006-02-17 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination, through personal narratives and reflective commentary, of life without sensation or movement in the body. In writing Still Lives, Jonathan Cole wanted to find out about living in a wheelchair, without having what he calls "the doctor/patient thing" intervene. He has done this by asking people with spinal cord injuries the simple question of what it is like to live without sensation and movement in the body. If the body has absented itself, where does the person reside? He describes his method in the first chapter: "I have gone to people, not with a white coat or a stethoscope...[but] to listen to their lives as they express them," and it is the candid and powerful narratives of twelve people with spinal cord injuries that form the heart of the book.Asking his simple question, Cole discovers that there is no single or simple answer. The twelve people with tetraplegia (known as quadriplegia in the US) or paraplegia whose stories he tells testify to similar impairments but widely differing experiences. Cole employs their individual responses to shape the book into six main sections: "Enduring," "Exploring," "Experimenting," "Observing," "Empowering," and, finally, "Continuing." Each concludes with a commentary on the broader issues raised. Still Lives moves from a view of impairment as tragedy to reveal the possibilities and richness of experience available to those living with spinal injuries. More universally, it offers new perspectives on our relation to our bodies. In exploring the creative and imaginative adjustments required to construct a "still life," it makes a plea for the able-bodied to adjust their view of this most profound of impairments.

Download or read book Land of Big Numbers written by Te-Ping Chen and published by Mariner Books. This book was released on 2021 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A debut story collection offering a kaleidoscopic portrait of life for contemporary Chinese people, set between China and the United States"--

Download or read book Entangled Narratives written by Lars-Christer Hydén and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-12 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As people are living longer on average than ever before, the number of those with dementia will increase. Because many will live a considerable time at home with their diagnosis, we need to know more about the ways people can adapt to and learn to live with dementia in their everyday lives. Lars-Christer Hydén argues in this book that to do so will involve re-imagining what dementia really is and what it can mean to the afflicted and their loved ones. One of the most important everyday opportunities for sharing experiences is the simple act of storytelling. But when someone close to you gradually loses the ability to tell stories and cherish the shared history you have together, this is seen as a threat to the relationship, to the feeling of belonging together, and to the identity of the person diagnosed. Therefore, learning about how people with dementia can participate in storytelling along with their families and friends helps to sustain those relationships and identities. In Entangled Narratives, Hydén not only emphasizes the possibilities that are inherent in collaborative storytelling, but instructs professionals and otherwise healthy relatives to learn how to effectively listen and, ultimately, re-imagine their patients and loved ones as collaborative meaning-makers in their lives.

Download or read book A Mind for Numbers written by Barbara A. Oakley and published by TarcherPerigee. This book was released on 2014-07-31 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engineering professor Barbara Oakley knows firsthand how it feels to struggle with math. In her book, she offers you the tools needed to get a better grasp of that intimidating but inescapable field.

Download or read book Book of Numbers written by Joshua Cohen and published by Random House. This book was released on 2015-06-09 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “More impressive than all but a few novels published so far this decade . . . a wheeling meditation on the wired life, on privacy, on what being human in the age of binary code might mean . . . [Joshua] Cohen, all of thirty-four, emerges as a major American writer.”—The New York Times NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY VULTURE AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND THE WALL STREET JOURNAL “Book of Numbers . . . is shatteringly powerful. I cannot think of anything by anyone in [Cohen’s] generation that is so frighteningly relevant and composed with such continuous eloquence. There are moments in it that seem to transcend our impasse.”—Harold Bloom The enigmatic billionaire founder of Tetration, the world’s most powerful tech company, hires a failed novelist, Josh Cohen, to ghostwrite his memoirs. The mogul, known as Principal, brings Josh behind the digital veil, tracing the rise of Tetration, which started in the earliest days of the Internet by revolutionizing the search engine before venturing into smartphones, computers, and the surveillance of American citizens. Principal takes Josh on a mind-bending world tour from Palo Alto to Dubai and beyond, initiating him into the secret pretext of the autobiography project and the life-or-death stakes that surround its publication. Insider tech exposé, leaked memoir-in-progress, international thriller, family drama, sex comedy, and biblical allegory, Book of Numbers renders the full range of modern experience both online and off. Embodying the Internet in its language, it finds the humanity underlying the virtual. Featuring one of the most unforgettable characters in contemporary fiction, Book of Numbers is an epic of the digital age, a triumph of a new generation of writers, and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do. Praise for Book of Numbers “The Great American Internet Novel is here. . . . Book of Numbers is a fascinating look at the dark heart of the Web. . . . A page-turner about life under the veil of digital surveillance . . . one of the best novels ever written about the Internet.”—Rolling Stone “A startlingly talented novelist.”—The Wall Street Journal “Remarkable . . . dazzling . . . Cohen’s literary gifts . . . suggest that something is possible, that something still might be done to safeguard whatever it is that makes us human.”—Francine Prose, The New York Review of Books