Applied artificial intelligence technology for using narrative analytics to automatically generate narratives from line charts

An apparatus comprising:

• a computer system comprising a processor and memory, wherein the processor in cooperation with the memory is configured to:
• process visualization parameter data to determine how to translate the visualization parameter data into a natural language narrative that explains the visualization parameter data, the visualization parameter data comprising visualization data and visualization metadata suitable for a line chart, the visualization data comprising a plurality of values for a measure over a dimension, the visualization metadata comprising (1) first metadata that identifies the line chart as a visualization type for the measure values, (2) second metadata that identifies the measure, and (3) third metadata that identifies the dimension, wherein the processor in cooperation with the memory is further configured to perform the following as part of the process operation:
• access a data structure based on at least the first metadata within the processed visualization parameter data, wherein the accessed data structure associates a line chart visualization type with data representative of a story type for the natural language narrative;
• and
• map the visualization parameter data based on the accessed data structure to a narrative generation engine that is configured to (1) compute a plurality of metrics relating to the measure values for the measure identified by the second metadata and (2) apply natural language generation (NLG) to generate natural language narrative content for the natural language narrative in accordance with the associated story type, wherein the generated natural language narrative content describes at least one of the computed metrics;
• and
• execute the narrative generation engine based on the visualization parameter data to generate the natural language narrative content for the natural language narrative in accordance with the associated story type.

A computer program product comprising:

• a plurality of instructions that are resident on a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, the instructions configured for execution by a processor to cause the processor to:
• process visualization parameter data to determine how to translate the visualization parameter data into a natural language narrative that explains the visualization parameter data, the visualization parameter data comprising visualization data and visualization metadata suitable for a line chart, the visualization data comprising a plurality of values for a measure over a dimension, the visualization metadata comprising (1) first metadata that identifies the line chart as a visualization type for the measure values, (2) second metadata that identifies the measure, and (3) third metadata that identifies the dimension, wherein the instructions are further configured for execution by the processor to cause the processor to perform the following as part of the process operation:
• access a data structure based on at least the first metadata within the processed visualization parameter data, wherein the accessed data structure associates a line chart visualization type with data representative of a story type for the natural language narrative;
• and
• map the visualization parameter data based on the accessed data structure to a narrative generation engine that is configured to (1) compute a plurality of metrics relating to the measure values for the measure identified by the second metadata and (2) apply natural language generation (NLG) to generate natural language narrative content for the natural language narrative in accordance with the associated story type, wherein the generated natural language narrative content describes at least one of the computed metrics;
• and
• execute the narrative generation engine based on the visualization parameter data to generate the natural language narrative content for the natural language narrative in accordance with the associated story type.