Journalists are often tasked with making complicated information accessible to a wide audience. Given mere minutes or inches to communicate information that might have taken a researcher pages to explain. Financial data can be particularly tricky to translate as it can require not only a comfort level with numbers but also some understanding of financial markets or economic principles. Reporting on financial information is the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories with guest Alan Smith.

Alan Smith (@theboysmithy) leads the Finanical Times' newsroom team of data reporters and visual journalists. A data visualisation specialist, his TEDx talk Why You Should Love Statistics was featured on TED.com in 2017. Alan is the author of How Charts Work, a handbook on designing with data using the Finanical Times' principles. He is also Honorary Professor of Practice at UCL's Social Data Institute. Before he joined the Finanical Times', he was head of digital content at the UK Office for National Statistics where he was awarded an OBE in 2011 for services to official statistics.