Following on from this post about making numbers relevant to the people you’re communicating with, here’s a video that makes the numbers about the Iraq war tangible (I make no comments about its politics, just watch it for how it translates the numbers).
via DoshDosh
Make numbers concrete
The rule of thumb with statistics and numbers is to bring them into units that make sense to people. In the brilliant The Tiger That Isn’t: Seeing Through a World of Numbers Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot start with a chapter called ‘Is That A Big Number?’ They recommend that whenever we hear a statistic, especially in national politics, we should ask ourselves exactly that. Because often millions of pounds or billions of dollars turn out to be not much money when shared out over the spread of a country’s population.
In the same way, the big numbers that we want people to get often don’t seem big to the people we’re talking to. Or the numbers that seem big to others actually aren’t when put into context. How do we get people to relate to a Terabyte? How much is 570 staff hours in the context of the whole project’s resource allocation? What does 98.9% uptime mean?
Here’s a website that might help you get thinking.
SensibleUnits will allow you to type in pretty much any measurement and make it sensible. Kind of.
How big is Singapore?
We spend a lot of our time in Singapore which is 692 sq km. When people in the UK ask me how big Singapore is, I might tell them that it’s just under two Isle of Wights. Nods of comprehension.
SensibleUnits tells me that 692 sq km is also:
- 8.9 Guernseys.
- 4.3 Liechtensteins.
- 2.2 Maltas.
- 0.93 Tongas.
Perfect!
How far is Singapore from London?
Wiki answers tells me: 6750 miles.
SensibleUnits says:
- 24 Grand Canyons.
- 1.7 Amazon rivers.
- 1.6 Great Walls of China.
- 1.2 Trans-Siberian railways.
Hmm.. ok.
But if I divide the number by 10 and put in 675 miles it gives me:
- 26 marathons.
- 22 Channel Tunnels.
- 14 Panama Canals.
- 2.4 Grand Canyons.
So Singapore is 260 marathons or 220 Channel Tunnels away from London. Ok!
How much is a terabyte?
SensibleUnits says:
- 120 DVDs (dual layer).
- 20 Blu-ray Discs (dual layer).
- 310 human genomes.
- 120 Windows Vista installations.
Ok, so not fantastic for everything, but you get the idea…
Create your own ‘local’ statistics
What you could do with SensibleUnits if you were talking about recycling paper, for example, is work out how many sheets of paper are being wasted by your office each day/week/month/year and then work out how high that stack would be. Then put that number into SensibleUnits and voilá!
By translating numbers into concrete quantities that people can feel you make it easy for them to take action based on those numbers. You also make it easier for them to talk about them to others. “Do you know…?’
What are some statistics that you’ve heard that made you stop and gasp?
Did you have a play with SensibleUnits? What made you go ‘Cool!’ or ‘What?!’
How have you converted statistics well in the past?
Tell me, tell me! Click here to leave a comment.
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Related articles
~ Presenting detailed but necessary info without people dying from boredom
~ Using numbers in business communication
~ Using graphs in presentations – Seth Godin talks sense…
Just wanted to stop by to say thanks, but decided I really like what you’re doing so just have to subscribe now!
Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog.
Cheers! Sandra. R.