This paper examines storytelling with numbers in diagrams as a cultural technique that allows a daily use of large, complex, flexible amounts of data. On the basis of a flexible concept of storytelling it is argued that diagrams open narrative spaces. Two different types of diagrams are analysed in terms of the extent to which abstract knowledge can be produced, processed and used by objectification and by technical support in everyday storytelling. Using the example of an informational graphic in a regional daily newspaper and the experimental numerical storytelling of an artist, the paper advocates a culture analytical study of diagrammatic (everyday) practices. Such an analysis makes current changes associated with the assignment of meaning to number-based knowledge in all areas of personal life in (digitised) societies easier to understand.

Keywords
narration, knowledge, numbers, data, quantifying