Sure, if you count the marchers, you get a hard number you can put on a slide deck, but that number doesn’t capture the echo of a single shout or the weight of a clenched fist. Data can prove a narrative, but it also truncates nuance; a chart of turnout never tells you why people turned up or why some stayed away. The trick is to layer metrics with stories—use the numbers to frame the issue, but keep the pulse in the field, not just in Excel.